Causes, Consequences and Prevention of Refrigeration Fires in Residential Dwellings

There are around 300 residential dwelling fires in Great Britain each year where a fridge or freezer is cited as the cause. A number of these incidents have resulted in injuries/fatalities and produced significant levels of property damage. This paper examines the causes and consequences of refrigeration fires in residential dwelling fires in Great Britain (London and England) and the evidence collected via fire investigation of residential dwelling fires involving fridges or freezers. Analysis of the data collected from these fires suggests that, once ignition occurs, fires started by faults in fridge/freezers are more likely to spread beyond both the appliance and the room of origin, and tend to cause more damage than fires started by the other types of white goods appliance (washing machine, dishwasher or tumble dryer). A number of common failure modes leading to ignition in domestic refrigeration fires, along with specific fire escalation and spread mechanism are identified. Based upon the information obtained from fire investigations and a comparison between the design and construction of refrigeration appliances used in Great Britain and USA, a number of recommendations are suggested which could be used to help reduce the risk of domestic refrigeration fires

Body mass estimates of an exceptionally complete Stegosaurus (Ornithischia: Thyreophora): comparing volumetric and linear bivariate mass estimation methods

© 2015 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. The file attached is the published version of the article

Magnetic Attraction

In the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21 in Paris, world leaders have been negotiating to limit the global warming to below 2°C by 2100. These talks are necessary to avoid serious climate catastrophes and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by increasing the use of zero carbon technologies such as magnetic refrigeration for heating or cooling. This is an emerging, innovative and potential low carbon technology. Due to the increased concern about global warming and an ever increasing energy consumption, the interest in magnetic refrigeration as a new heating or cooling technology competitive to conventional vapour compression has grown considerably over the last 15 years. The principle of magnetic refrigeration is based on a phenomenon known as magnetocaloric effect (MCE). This was discovered by Emil Warburg in 1881 and is related to the property of some exotic materials such as Gadolinium and Dysprosium that heat up when applying a magnetic field and cool down when the magnetic field is removed

Life-Saving Cooling

Large areas of many developing countries have no grid electricity. According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook (2015) report, 1.2 billion people lacked access to electricity in 2013, which is equivalent to more than 16 percent of the world population. The research reported by IEA (2015) showed that more than 95 percent of those living without electricity live in rural areas, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia where there is no distribution grid for electricity, and there are no prospects of the grid reaching them in the near future see Figure 1. Even in areas with grid power, the demand for electricity has outpaced supply resulting in unreliable electricity availability, insufficient for continuous refrigeration

The Value of hybrid heat pumps

In households not connected to mains gas, electric heat pumps offer the opportunity to provide high efficiency low carbon heating as an alternative to electric heaters, LPG or oil based systems. As a result this technology is an ideal heating solution for the 4 million households in the UK that don’t have access to mains gas. However, electric heat pumps also offer large scale carbon savings when used for heating in the 22 million households that do have gas as well as mains electricity. In these applications hybrid heat pumps present an attractive opportunity for reducing fossil fuel consumption. In March 2013, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) published a document entitled “The Future of Heating: Meeting the challenge”. This report predicted that by 2030 approximately 26% of the UK’s heating energy output will be met by air source heat pumps alone, and as much as 56% will be met by hybrid system

Customer Privacy Concerns as a Barrier to Sharing Data about Energy Use in Smart Local Energy Systems: A Rapid Realist Review

The purpose of this review is to investigate the nature of privacy concerns in the context of smart local energy systems (SLES) to understand how SLES providers can minimize both user concerns, and cause for concern, around privacy. We conducted a rapid realist review and thematic framework analysis against Bronfenbrenner’s socio–ecological model to understand privacy concerns in different contexts. A common privacy concern was that sharing detailed energy use data had the potential to reveal information about home life, and to intrude upon people’s sense of autonomy, choice, and control. Evidence suggests that people are willing to accept new data sharing technologies if the benefits of doing so are clear, anticipated, and mutually beneficial. Building trust, through increasing knowledge and understanding, was a mechanism for overcoming privacy concerns, but this was mediated by the organization providing the information. Non-profit organizations were more trusted to ensure appropriate safeguards to privacy were in place. One key barrier to participation with good supporting evidence was that people could resist perceived intrusions on their privacy. This could be actively resisted by refusing to install data collection technologies or passively by non-participation in adapting energy use behaviours: both of which are necessary for SLES to achieve their goals of managing energy demand and building resilience in smart grids

Performance Enhancement of Urban Ground Source Heat Pumps through Interactions with Underground Railway Tunnels

Ground source heat pumps (GSHPs) can provide an efficient way of heating and cooling buildings due to their high operating efficiencies. The implementation of these systems in urban environments could have further benefits. In such locations the ground source heat is potentially more accessible via alternative sources such as through underground railways (URs). This paper investigates to what extent the heat in the soil surrounding an UR tunnel could enhance the operation of urban GSHPs installations. To address this, a numerical investigation was set out which included a parametric study considering a number of geometrical options of the systems. The results showed that heat extraction rates of GSHPs installed near UR tunnels can be significantly improved by up to ~ 43%

Smart Local Energy Systems (SLES): A framework for exploring transition, context, and impacts

Energy systems globally are becoming increasingly decentralised; experiencing new types of loads; incorporating digital or “smart” technologies; and seeing the demand side engage in new ways. These changes impact on the management and regulation of future energy systems and question how they will support a socially equitable, acceptable, net-zero transition. This paper couples a meta-narrative literature review with expert interviews to explore how socio-technical regimes associated with centralised systems of provision (i.e. the prevailing paradigm in many countries around the world) differ to those of smart local energy systems (SLES). Findings show how SLES regimes incorporate niche technologies, business models and governance structures to enable new forms of localised operation and optimisation (e.g. automated network management), smarter decision making and planning, by new actors (e.g. local authorities, other local stakeholders), and engaging users in new ways. Through this they are expected to deliver on a wide range of outcomes, both within the SLES boundary and to the wider system. However, there may be trade-offs between outcomes due to pressures for change originating from competing actors (e.g. landscape vs. incumbents in the regime); understanding the mapping between different outcomes, SLES elements and their interconnections will be key to unlocking wider benefits

Control strategy of a novel dry air ground source (DAGS) system

Based on a number of studies carried out; it has been identified that Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) systems are widely used as one of the preferred low carbon technologies in the UK. The use of these systems is due to their economic advantages and potential reduction of carbon footprint. However, a number of the studies have highlighted that the systems are either installed incorrectly or operated and controlled improperly and therefore result in poor performance. GSHP performance is affected by the temperature of the ground and when thermally saturated its efficiency reduces significantly. This paper investigates the potential to reduce the level of thermal saturation by rejecting heat via a Dry Air Cooler (DAC) when the ground and ambient temperatures favour this. DACs are often fitted to GSHP systems to reject heat during extreme conditions to protect the system, rather than improve performance. In this investigation, an empirical Transient System Simulation (TRNSYS) model has been developed and used to investigate the control algorithms so as to identify the optimal operation and control strategies for DAGS system for enhancing the system efficiency. Specifically, the paper investigates the effect of using a DAC in conjunction with a GSHP system. This includes investigating the (i) energy input into the GSHP system, (ii) ground temperatures and (iii) Coefficient of Performance (COP). The results show significant savings can be achieved

Human hypocretin and melanin-concentrating hormone levels are linked to emotion and social interaction.

The neurochemical changes underlying human emotions and social behaviour are largely unknown. Here we report on the changes in the levels of two hypothalamic neuropeptides, hypocretin-1 and melanin-concentrating hormone, measured in the human amygdala. We show that hypocretin-1 levels are maximal during positive emotion, social interaction and anger, behaviours that induce cataplexy in human narcoleptics. In contrast, melanin-concentrating hormone levels are minimal during social interaction, but are increased after eating. Both peptides are at minimal levels during periods of postoperative pain despite high levels of arousal. Melanin-concentrating hormone levels increase at sleep onset, consistent with a role in sleep induction, whereas hypocretin-1 levels increase at wake onset, consistent with a role in wake induction. Levels of these two peptides in humans are not simply linked to arousal, but rather to specific emotions and state transitions. Other arousal systems may be similarly emotionally specialized