Model prototype of a solar tracking system supplying electrical power for sensors used in a natural disaster monitoring system

Sun is the universe main source of energy. This energy can be converted to useful electrical energy by the utilization of solar panels or photovoltaic (PV) during the daytime with the presence of suitable sun irradiation level. It is important that during the energy conversion process, suitable methods are employed to extract as much energy as possible from the PV panels. Some issues affecting PV performance are the accuracy of the panel’s orientation and tilt angle with respect to the sun position. This causes PV to operate with lower efficiency, thus generating low output power compared to its rated capacity. One of the approaches to this issue is to constantly maintain a perpendicular profile of PV panels towards the sun direction as to capture the sun energy as much as possible, thus increases the PV efficiency. To do so, the conversion system needs a tracking mechanism to help the solar panel to constantly follow the sun’s direction, enhancing the achievement of higher PV efficiency. For this reason, a model prototype has been designed and developed which consists of a dual-axis solar tracking system, with two axis movement direction from east to west and north to south by utilizing the Light Dependent Resistors (LDRs) sensors. This tracking system is developed using Arduino UNO as the microcontroller that allows the PV panel to move optimally towards the high intensity of sunlight via four LDRs and two servo motors. To analyze the PV tracker’s performance, a monitoring system is implemented using ThingSpeak platform as the Internet of Things (IoT) platform interfacing with the controller Node MCU ESP8266. This monitoring system records the data of the PV energy parameters from the sensors’ output employed in this prototype. To assess the system efficacy, the dual-axis tracking system is compared with the single-axis tracking system. The result showed that the dual-axis tracker has efficiencies of 68.46% which is higher compared to that’s of the single-axis tracker. Implementation of the real-time monitoring system has shown a practical and handy way to analyze and monitor the solar tracking system’s performance

Fatty acid profiles of Antarctic cyanobacteria Leptolyngbya

Antarctic cyanobacteria may represent a potential resource of new and unique compounds with interesting capabilities. Profiling of fatty acids in Antarctic cyanobacteria can provide an overview of potential fatty acids present in them, that can be utilised in future applications

Wind Characteristics Influencing Wind Energy.

Usually the wind speed for a particular site is given at a standard reference height of 10 m. However, in the context of wind turbines, the hub height is a natural choice for estimating the power potential

Free piston linear generator for low grid power generation

Generating power is of great importance nowadays across the world. However, recently, the world became aware of the climatic changes due to the greenhouse effect caused by CO2 emissions and began seeking solutions to reduce the negative impact on the environment. Besides, the exhaustion of fossil fuels and their environmental impact, make it is crucial to develop clean energy sources, and efforts are focused on developing and improving the efficiency of all energy consuming systems. The tubular permanent magnet linear generators (TPMLGs) are the best candidate for energy converters. Despite being suffering problem of attraction force between permanent magnets and stator teeth, to eliminate such attraction force, ironless-stator could be considered. Thus, they could waive the presence of any magnetic attraction between the moving and stator part. This paper presents the design and analysis of ironless -cored TPMLG for low grid power generation. The main advantages of this generator are the low cogging force and high efficiency. Therefore, the magnetic field computation of the proposed generator has been performed by applying a magnetic vector potential and utilizing a 2-D finite element analysis (FEA). Moreover, the experimental results for the current profile, pressure profile and velocity profile have been presented

Severity impact of a vapour cloud explosion (VCE) – Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) road tanker accident

An explosion accident from a road tanker while carrying hazardous materials can have a dangerous effect on road users and the surrounding area through which the road tanker passes. Based on the evidence of the accident case involving the road tanker reported, it shows that this accident case can cause death and destruction to the surrounding property. In Malaysia, several cases of accidents involving road tankers have also occurred. Among the methods used to determine the impact of a road tanker explosion is the use of the consequences analysis method. Currently, there is limited number of software that can be used to determine the impact of a road tanker explosion accident that carries explosive chemicals such as butadiene, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), etc. However, there are weaknesses in the display of the impact results plotted on the map. Where the impact of the explosion is only shown to the 3 main zones, namely building damage, serious injury, and glass breakage. In this paper, the enhanced contour profile method on the impact of an LPG road tanker explosion on human and structural damage is shown

Investigation of puffing and micro-explosion of water-in-diesel emulsion spray using shadow imaging

Water-in-diesel emulsions potentially favor the occurrence of micro-explosions when exposed to elevated temperatures, thereby improving the mixing of fuels with the ambient gas. The distributions and sizes of both spray and dispersed water droplets have a significant effect on puffing and micro-explosion behavior. Although the injection pressure is likely to alter the properties of emulsions, this effect on the spray flow puffing and micro-explosion has not been reported. To investigate this, we injected a fuel spray using a microsyringe needle into a high-temperature environment to investigate the droplets’ behavior. Injection pressures were varied at 10% v/v water content, the samples were imaged using a digital microscope, and the dispersed droplet size distributions were extracted using a purpose-built image processing algorithm. A high-speed camera coupled with a long-distance microscope objective was then used to capture the emulsion spray droplets. Our measurements indicated that the secondary atomization was significantly affected by the injection pressure which reduced the dispersed droplet size and hence caused a delay in puffing. At high injection pressure (500, 1000, and 1500 bar), the water was evaporated during the spray and although there was not enough droplet residence time, puffing and micro-explosion were clearly observed. This study suggests that high injection pressures have a detrimental effect on the secondary atomization of water-in-diesel emulsions

Rumah ideal/ Zainal

vi, 73 hal. : ill. ; 30 c

Rumah ideal/ Zainal

vi, 73 hal. : ill. ; 30 c

Rumah ideal/ Zainal

vi, 73 hal. : ill. ; 30 c

Characterization of rice husk for cyclone gasifier

The characterization of rice husk from local rice mills has been studied and evaluated to determine its potential utilization as a biomass fuel for a cyclone gasifier. The raw rice husk was pre-treated throughout a grinding process into smaller sizes of particles which is within a range of 0.4 to 1 mm and the sample of ground rice husk was analyzed for its fuel characteristics. The result of proximate analysis shows that the ground rice husk with size distribution within 0.4 to 1 mm contains 13.4% of fixed carbon, 62.95% of volatile matter and 18.5% of ash on dry basis. The moisture content of the sample was measured and determined as 10.4% (wet basis) and the calorific value was found to be approximately 14.8 MJ kg-1 with bulk density of 91.46 kg m-3. The result of ultimate analysis validates both ash and moisture content which are found to be 18.15 and 10.4%, respectively. Other elemental compositions determined by the ultimate analysis are carbon (37.9%), hydrogen (5.2%), nitrogen (0.14%), sulfur (0.61%) and oxygen (27.7% by difference). The study has identified that the fuel characteristics of the ground rice husk is comparable with other types of biomass and thus, making it another potential source of fuel for the cyclone gasification system