NANO-BATTERY TECHNOLOGY FOR EV-HEV PANEL: A PIONEERING STUDY

Global trends toward CO2 reduction and resource efficiency have significantly increased the importance of lightweight materials for automobile original equipment manufacturers (OEM). CO2 reduction is a fundamental driver for a more lightweight automobile. The introduction of Electrical Vehicles (EVs) is one initiative towards this end. However EVs are currently facing several weaknesses: limited driving range, battery pack heaviness, lack of safety and thermal control, high cost, and overall limited efficiency. This study presents a panel-style nano-battery technology built into an EV with CuO filler solid polymer electrolyte (SPE) sandwiched by carbon fiber (CF) and lithium (Li) plate. In addition to this, an aluminum laminated polypropylene film is used as the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) shield. The proposed battery body panel of the EV would reduce the car weight by about 20%, with a charge and discharge capacity of 1.5 kWh (10% of car total power requirement), and provide the heat insulation for the car which would save about 10% power consumption of the air conditioning system. Therefore, the EV would be benefited by 30% in terms of energy reduction by using the proposed body. Furthermore, the proposed body is considered environmental-friendly since it is recyclable for use in a new product. However, the main limiting factors of the SPE are its thermal behavior and moderate ionic conductivity at low temperatures. The SPE temperature is maintained by controlling the battery panel charging/discharge rate. It is expected that the proposed panel-style nano-battery use in an EV would save up to 6.00 kWh in battery energy, equivalent to 2.81 liters of petrol and prevent 3.081 kg of CO2 emission for a travel distance of 100 km.   KEYWORDS: epoxy resin; carbon fiber; lithium thin plate; energy generation; solid electrolyte batter

WASTE HEAT RECOVERY IN HEAT PUMP SYSTEMS: SOLUTION TO REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING

Energy conversion technologies, where waste heat recovery systems are included, have received significant attention in recent years due to reasons that include depletion of fossil fuel, increasing oil prices, changes in climatic conditions, and global warming. For low temperature applications, there are many sources of thermal waste heat, and several recovery systems and potential useful applications have been proposed by researchers [1-4]. In addition, many types of equipment are used to recover waste thermal energy from different systems at low, medium, and high temperature applications, such as heat exchangers, waste heat recovery boiler, thermo-electric generators, and recuperators. In this paper, the focus is on waste heat recovery from air conditioners, and an efficient application of these energy resources. Integration of solar energy with heat pump technologies and major factors that affect the feasibility of heat recovery systems have been studied and reviewed as well.   KEYWORDS: waste heat recovery; heat pump

A desalination system utilizing solar ambient and waste energy

Desalination is considered one of the most suitable areas for the utilization of solar energy, as there are many places in the world where abundant supply of solar energy is available and also there is a great demand for fresh water. An integrated solar heat pump desalination system is developed at the National University of Singapore (NUS), which also offers the opportunity of water heating and drying utilizing solar, ambient energy and waste heat from air-con, which is conventionally dumped to the environment causing global warming. Desalination is carried out by making use of MED (Multi-Effect Distillation) system. Within the MED chamber, both flashing and evaporation of saline water take place. The maximum Coefficient of Performance (COP) of the heat pump system was around 5.8. In the integrated system, the maximum fresh water production rate was 9.6 litres/hr with Performance Ration (PR) of 1.2. For only desalination, the system has the potential to produce a maximum of 30 liters/hr of fresh water

Solar-assisted heat-pump dryer and water heater

A solar-assisted heat-pump dryer and water heater has been designed, fabricated and tested. The performance of the system has been investigated under the meteorological conditions of Singapore. The system consists of a variable-speed reciprocating compressor, collector evaporator, storage tank, air-cooled condenser, auxiliary heater, blower, dryer, dehumidifier, and air collector. The drying system is designed in such a way that some of the components can be isolated depending on the weather conditions and usage pattern. The drying medium used is air and the drying chamber is configured to carry out batch drying of food grains. A simulation program is developed using Fortran language to evaluate the performance of the system and the influence of different variables. The performance indices considered to evaluate the performance of the system are: Solar Fraction (SF) and Coefficient of Performance (COP) with and without a water heater. The values of COP, obtained from the simulation and experiment are 7.0, and 5.0, respectively, whereas the solar fraction (SF) values of 0.65 and 0.61 are obtained from simulation and experiment, respectively.Heat pump Drying Coefficient of performance Solar fraction

Drying and shrinkage of polymer gels

The polymer hydrogel was synthesized by photo-polymerization process (UV light, 60 ºC) in presence of Photo-initiator (IrgacureR) and Cross-linker (NN'-methylene bisacrylamide; MBAM). In the present work, the drying of polymer hydrogel was carried out to study the effect of temperature, gel-sheet thickness, monomer ratio of acryl acid to acrylamide (AA/AM), concentration of MBAM and quantity of monomers. A correlation has been developed for modified sheet thickness as a function of contraction coefficient and degree of drying. Effective diffusivity was estimated from Fickian-diffusive model considering modified sheet thickness and was found to be in the range of 1.1 <FONT FACE=Symbol>&acute;</FONT> 10-10-5.93 <FONT FACE=Symbol>&acute;</FONT> 10-10 m²/s. The activation energy obtained using Arrhenius type equation was found to be in the range of 2979-10737 kJ/kmol H2O. The drying behavior shows an initial shoot-up in drying rate followed by constant rate and two falling rate periods