Sustainable Economic and Emission Control Strategy for Deregulated Power Systems

The electric power system operation and control is a multifaceted problem aims at assuring an economic, reliable, and environmentally acceptable power supply to its consumers at all times. So as to be environmentally acceptable, electric utilities are required to reduce their power plant emissions. Due to significant consumers' responsiveness on clean electrical energy, varied operational performance schemes have developed in time. The integration of renewable energy resources, implementation of advanced pollution control equipment, adoption of multi-fuel dispatching techniques, up gradation of inefficient power generating units, and emission constraint generation scheduling are a few of them. This paper proposes a non-iterative analytical algorithm for generation scheduling of deregulated energy systems with economic and emission control strategies subject to line load ability constraints. The objectives are achieved through changes in operating and control policies only without any changes in the system configuration. Application to a modified IEEE 30-bus test system validates the suitability of the proposed control schemes for real-time implementation. Keywords:  Economic control, emission control, transmission line load ability, generation scheduling, non-iterative analytical method JEL Classifications: C82, L94, P18, Q4

Cloud Based Solid Waste Transportation Optimisation for Energy Conversion

Effective and efficient management of solid waste is an incessantly growing and the obdurate problem of global and regional levels particularly for local authorities in urban centers. Several processes such as monitoring, collection, transporting, processing, recycling, and disposal are involved that requires immediate attention owing to economic and environmental concerns. Expressly the gathering and moving of solid waste to the energy production/recycling/ending destination has been prioritized higher because of its significant share of the total waste management budget. All these processes involve the mammoth amount of data and their manipulation for real-time use. Hence, this paper proposes a cloud based algorithm to optimize the transportation cost of solid waste from transfer stations to the final dumping stations subject to transfer vehicle constraints. The solid waste transportation dispatching is a direct analytical approach that provides three options: (i) economic dispatch option provides a minimum operating cost of solid waste transfer and its corresponding emission; (ii) emission dispatch option provides a minimum vehicle emission for the same quantity of the solid waste transferred and its corresponding operating cost of transfer and finally (iii) an environmentally friendly economic transfer of solid waste. The efficacy of the algorithm has been shown with an enduring solid waste management system in the Indian context. Keywords: Cloud, economic and environmental concerns, solid waste transportation JEL Classifications: B41, C61, C88, R4

Cloud computing for energy management in smart grid - an application survey

The smart grid is the emerging energy system wherein the application of information technology, tools and techniques that make the grid run more efficiently. It possesses demand response capacity to help balance electrical consumption with supply. The challenges and opportunities of emerging and future smart grids can be addressed by cloud computing. To focus on these requirements, we provide an in-depth survey on different cloud computing applications for energy management in the smart grid architecture. In this survey, we present an outline of the current state of research on smart grid development. We also propose a model of cloud based economic power dispatch for smart grid

Characterization of biodegradable polymer blends of acetylated and hydroxypropylated sago starch and natural rubber.

Development of biodegradable polymers from absolute environmental friendly materials has attracted increasing research interest due to public awareness of waste disposal problems caused by low degradable conventional plastics. In this study, the potential of incorporating natural rubber latex (NRL) into chemically modified sago starch for the making biodegradable polymer blends was assessed. Native sago starch was acetylated and hydroxypropylated before gelatinization in preparing starch thermoplastic using glycerol. They were than casted with NRL into biopolymer films according to the ratios of 100.00/0.00, 99.75/1.25, 98.50/2.50, 95.00/5.00, 90.00/10.00 and 80.00/20.00 wt/wt, via solution spreading technique. Water absorption, thermal, mechanical, morphological and biodegradable properties of the product films were evaluated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), universal testing machine (UTM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Results showed that acetylation promoted the incorporating behavior of NRL in sago starch by demonstrating a good adhesion characteristic and giving a uniform, homogenous micro-structured surface under SEM observation. However, the thin biopolymer films did not exhibit any remarkable trend in their DSC thermal profile and UTM mechanical properties. The occurrence of NRL suppressed water adsorption capacity and delayed the biodegradability of the biopolymer films in the natural environment. Despite the depletion in water adsorption capacity, all of the product films degraded 50 % within 12 weeks. This study concluded that biopolymers with desirable properties could be formulated by choosing an appropriate casting ratio of the sago starch to NRL with suitable chemical substitution modes

Plasma-activated water:Physicochemical properties, generation techniques, and applications

Plasma-activated water (PAW) is water that has been treated with atmospheric pressure plasma. Due to the presence of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS), PAW can be used in various applications such as (1) surface disinfection and food decontamination, (2) enhancement in seed germination, and (3) enhancement in surface cooling in the nucleate boiling regime. Briefly, for surface disinfection, the reactive species in PAW can induce oxidative stress on microbes; for enhancement of seed germination, the reactive species in PAW can trigger seed germination and provide nutrients; for enhancement in surface cooling, the reactive species cause a reduction in the surface tension of PAW, facilitating the phase-change heat transfer and, quite unexpectedly, minimizing the surface oxidation. Here, we review the physicochemical properties of PAW, the three commonly used techniques (plasma jet, dielectric barrier discharge, and corona discharge) for generating atmospheric pressure plasma, and the use of PAW for the above three applications. In particular, we review the recent development of the miniaturization of the plasma generator integrated with an acoustic neutralizer to produce plasma-activated aerosols, elimination of the need for storage, and the interesting physicochemical properties of PAW that lead to cooling enhancement.</p

A Cloud Associated Smart Grid Admin Dashboard

Intelligent smart grid system undertakes electricity demand in a sustainable, reliable, economical and environmentally friendly manner. As smart grid involves, it has the liability of meeting the changing consumer needs on the day-to-day basis. Modern energy consumers like to vivaciously regulate their consumption patterns more competently and intelligently than current provided ways. To fulfill the consumers’ needs, smart meters and sensors make the grid infrastructure more efficient and resilient in energy data collection and management even with the ever-changing renewable power generation. Though cloud acts as an outlet for the energy consumers to retrieve energy data from the grid, the information systems available are technically constrained and not user-friendly. Hence, a simple technology enabled utility-consumer interactive information system in the form of a dashboard is presented to cater the electric consumer needs