Cool Roof Impact on Building Energy Need: The Role of Thermal Insulation with Varying Climate Conditions

Cool roof effectiveness in improving building thermal-energy performance is affected by different variables. In particular, roof insulation level and climate conditions are key parameters influencing cool roofs benefits and whole building energy performance. This work aims at assessing the role of cool roof in the optimum roof configuration, i.e., combination of solar reflectance capability and thermal insulation level, in terms of building energy performance in different climate conditions worldwide. To this aim, coupled dynamic thermal-energy simulation and optimization analysis is carried out. In detail, multi-dimensional optimization of combined building roof thermal insulation and solar reflectance is developed to minimize building annual energy consumption for heating-cooling. Results highlight how a high reflectance roof minimizes annual energy need for a small standard office building in the majority of considered climates. Moreover, building energy performance is more sensitive to roof solar reflectance than thermal insulation level, except for the coldest conditions. Therefore, for the selected building, the optimum roof typology presents high solar reflectance capability (0.8) and no/low insulation level (0.00-0.03 m), except for extremely hot or cold climate zones. Accordingly, this research shows how the classic approach of super-insulated buildings should be reframed for the office case toward truly environmentally friendly buildings.The work was partially funded by the Spanish government (RTI2018-093849-B-C31). This work was partially supported by ICREA under the ICREA Academia programme. Dr. Alvaro de Gracia has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 712949 (TECNIOspring PLUS) and from the Agency for Business Competitiveness of the Government of Catalonia. This publication has emanated from research supported (in part) by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) under the SFI Strategic Partnership Programme Grant Number SFI/15/SPP/E3125

Modular eco-class: an approach towards a sustainable innovative learning environment in Egypt

Today, Egypt suffers from deterioration of education quality as a result of deficient learning spaces, insufficient governmental expenditure and funding, and lack of proper research in education developmental strategies. Additionally, 21st century learning requires innovative spaces that connect school, home, and community. Therefore, new learning spaces should increase flexibility, support hands-on and outside-class learning activities in order to motivate learners. Furthermore, they intend to encourage extra-curricular activities beyond conventional learning times. Undoubtedly, comfortable, safe and creative learning spaces can inspire and motivate users, while ugly/unsafe spaces can depress. Therefore, welldesigned learning spaces are able to support creative, productive and efficient learning processes on one hand. On the other hand, ecological design measures became an increasingly major keystone for modern sustainable learning-spaces. Thus, learning-spaces’ design process, form, components, materials, features, and energy-saving technologies can yield well-educated, environmentally-literate, energy-conscious, and innovative future-generations. This paper represents a preliminary phase of an ongoing research project that aims to create a framework for an Innovative Sustainable Learning Environment (ISLE) in developing countries, the Middle East region, and Egypt in particular. This project aims at encouraging constructive relationships between users, buildings, ecosystems and to improve quality of learning through intelligent and ecologically well designed learning-spaces. The paper proposes the concept of modular Eco-Class as a framework of learning spaces and a stepforward in the direction of ISLE. Moreover, this Eco-Class aims to educate and provide balance between building’s environmental sensitivity, high performance, initial cost, and lifecycle costs without harming the surrounding ecology. The Eco-Class not only intends to promote a positive environmental impact to improve indoor air quality and energy efficiency, it also provides on its own an environment that educates learners and elevates environmentalawareness between future generations. Finally, the study and the ongoing research project of Eco-Class aim to provide validated design-guidelines for sustainable educational buildings, and to achieve the optimum innovative and sustainable learning environment in Egypt for effective and creative future-generation learners, parents, staff, and communities

Passive Design of Buildings for Extreme Weather Environment

Buildings account for nearly 40% of the end-use energy consumption and carbon emissions globally. Buildings, once built, are used at least for several decades. The building sector therefore holds a significant responsibility for implementing strategies to increase energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions and thus contribute to global efforts directed toward mitigating the adverse effects of climate change. The work presented in this paper is a part of continuing efforts to identify, analyze and promote the design of low energy, sustainable buildings with special reference to the Kazakhstan locality. Demonstration of improved environmental conditions and impact on energy savings will be outlined through a case study incorporating a passive design approach and detailed computational fluid dynamics analysis for an existing building complex. The influence of orientation and configuration is discussed with reference to energy efficiency and associated wind comfort and safety. The effect of these aspects on energy consumption and comfortable wind environment has been assessed using CFD analysis and proved to be affective. Single building and multiple building configurations have been analyzed and compared. According to the findings, multiple building configurations have better wind conditions when compared with a single standing building. With respect to orientation the former one should be modeled with the fully surrounded side of a “box” opposite to the predominant wind direction whereas the latter one should be located with the rear side opposite to the wind direction. Thus, results indicated that there is a considerable influence of passive design and orientation on energy efficiency, wind comfort and safety. Careful consideration and application of the findings can potentially lead to considerable decrease of energy consumption and, therefore, allow saving money and the environment at the same time

Airships for transporting highly volatile commodities

Large airships may prove feasible as carriers of commodities that move as gases or cryogenic liquids; buoyant gaseous cargo could be ballasted with liquid cargo. Airships are compact in shape, operate in a rarified medium, and hence can be fast and perhaps economic carriers of costly cryogenic tanks. The high-pressure gas pipeline has excessive surface area when carrying hydrogen and excessive fluid density when carrying natural gas, while the cryogenic ocean tanker runs in a dense medium and makes gravity waves. But the airship, despite its fluid dynamic advantages, faces problems of safety, weather, and altitude control

Automation and control in surface irrigation systems: current status and expected future trends

Surface irrigation systems are the most popular methods for irrigating crops and pastures not only in Australia but the world over. However, these systems are often labour intensive and exhibit low water use efficiency. Rising labour costs especially in the developed world and competition for scarce water resources have generated renewed interest in the automation of surface irrigation systems. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the current level of automation and control of surface irrigation systems. The automation techniques discussed utilise various devices including mechanical, electronic, pneumatic and hydraulic means. The use of telemetry is also discussed. With the almost universal access to high performance computers and fast internet, the concept of real-time control in surface irrigation is not far-fetched. Towards this end, an on-going research project at USQ aimed at modernising furrow irrigation by use of automatic control systems in real time is discusse