The gradual increase in the earth’s temperature in the last three decades highlights how global warming has become a major concern for the future of our planet. To meet the world’s needs for low CO2 power generation, alternatives to conventional fossil fuels are required. Solar energy is an attractive alternative that represents a vast resource which can be harnessed in all regions of the world. Dependency on fossil fuels to generate electricity in order to match the rapid power demand and increasing populations has resulted in huge pollution and damage to the environment. This paper considers the electricity demand and the amount of CO2 reductions of Sulymaniah International Airport in Kurdistan, Iraq. The cost of replacing a proportion of the conventional fossil fuel power generation with solar energy is first estimated and then theoretical calculations of possible reductions in CO2 emissions are presented

Ahmed, Waqar

Azabany, Azad

Khan, Khalid

CLoK

ArticleReductions in Co2 emissions from electricity generation from solar energy at Sulaymanyah airport in Kurdistan, IraqKhan, Khalid, Azabany, Azad and Ahmed, WaqarAvailable at http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/20476/Khan, Khalid, Azabany, Azad and Ahmed, Waqar (2014) Reductions in Co2 emissions from electricity generation from solar energy at Sulaymanyah airport in Kurdistan, Iraq. Asian Journal  of Science and Technology, 5 (8). pp. 479­481. ISSN 0976­3376  It is advisable to refer to the publisher’s version if you intend to cite from the work.For more information about UCLan’s research in this area go to http://www.uclan.ac.uk/researchgroups/ and search for <name of research Group>.For information about Research generally at UCLan please go to http://www.uclan.ac.uk/research/ All outputs in CLoK are protected by Intellectual Property Rights law, includingCopyright law.  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Terms and conditions for use of this material are defined in the http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/policies/CLoKCentral Lancashire online Knowledgewww.clok.uclan.ac.uk                                                                                                                                                                               RESEARCH ARTICLE   REDUCTIONS IN CO2 EMISSIONS FROM ELECTRICITY GENERATION FROM SOLAR  ENERGY AT SULAYMANYAH AIRPORT IN KURDISTAN, IRAQ     1Khalid Khan, 2Azad Azabany and 3*Waqar Ahmed  1School of Forensic and Investigative Sciences, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, PR1 2HE, Lancashire, UK 2Lancashire Business School, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, PR1 2HE, Lancashire, U.K 3School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Central Lancashire, PR1 2HE, Lancashire, U.K      ARTICLE INFO    ABSTRACT   The gradual increase in the earth’s temperature in the last three decades highlights how global warming has become a major concern for the future of our planet. To meet the world’s needs for low CO2 power generation, alternatives to conventional fossil fuels are required. Solar energy is an attractive alternative that represents a vast resource which can be harnessed in all regions of the world. Dependency on fossil fuels to generate electricity in order to match the rapid power demand and increasing populations has resulted in huge pollution and damage to the environment. This paper considers the electricity demand and the amount of CO2 reductions of Sulymaniah International Airport in Kurdistan, Iraq. The cost of replacing a proportion of the conventional fossil fuel power generation with solar energy is first estimated and then theoretical calculations of possible reductions in CO2 emissions are presented.        Copyright © 2014 Khalid Khan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.     INTRODUCTION  Solar energy is particularly attractive due to the abundance of solar irradiation [1], which if harnessed appropriately has the potential to supply all the global energy requirements. It is environmentally friendly and does not require extensive and expensive infrastructure to implement since solar systems are installed and generate electricity on-site compared to power stations many kilometres away from the point of use. Solar cells efficiencies [2] are also rapidly improving and reliability increasing with the use of new materials and technologies and hence these trends will enhance the implementation of solar solutions [3]. Solar energy is modelled as packets of energy called photons. The photons that impact on a material are absorbed and this energy is transformed to excite electrons within the material. The change of energy can be captured and converted into electrical power. In solar photovoltaic (PV) modules, sunlight is absorbed by the solar panels producing electrical changes within them which are used to generate electrical power for output use. Energy generation and the impact it has on the climate can be characterised by its carbon emission intensity i.e. a measure of the CO2 or other greenhouse gases such as methane CH4 or nitrous oxide N2O   *Corresponding author: Waqar Ahmed (prof.w.ahmed@gmail.com) School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Central Lancashire, PR1 2HE, Lancashire, U.K  which are released into the environment. Figure 1 shows how emissions have been increasing over time.  MATERIALS AND METHODS  Global warming due to the rise in the earth’s temperature has been gradually rising as seen in Figure 2. A comparison of the amount of carbon emission intensity produced from different technologies is shown in Figure 3 below [4]. It can be seen from the above figure that renewable technologies produce little or no emissions during operation but can produce some emissions during the manufacturing phase. The majority of CO2 comes from coal and gas as expected and the use of these to generate electrical power needs to be reduced. Nuclear energy does not generate much CO2 but has issues related to disposal of waste whilst wind energy requires the use of space steady flow of wind across the blades and wind turbines. Hence, PV seems like the most attractive and user friendly alternative. Therefore this option has been explored further in this study. We consider the operation and electricity demand of Sulymaniah international airport in Kurdistan, Iraq. A solar energy plant which can supply approximately 7.3% of the airports electricity demand will be considered with its estimated set up costs. Cost analysis of such a plant in the region has been carried out previously [5]. Analysis of the cost benefits and CO2 emission reductions using the solar plant can   ISSN: 0976-3376 Asian Journal of Science and Technology Vol. 5, Issue 8, pp. 479-481, August, 2014 Available Online at http://www.journalajst.com   ASIAN JOURNAL OF  SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY  Article History:  Received 13th May, 2014 Received in revised form 26th June, 2014 Accepted 18th July, 2014 Published online 31st August, 2014 Key words:    CO2 Emissions renewable Energy, Solar Irradiation,  Photovoltaic (PV) System   Figure 1. Concentration of Greenhouse Gases [6]   Figure 2. Global average temperature of the earth [6]    now be considered. The reduction CO2 emissions is a function of the amount of conventional power being displaced, its carbon intensity and the amount and type of energy consumed in the manufacturing and set up of solar energy plant.  RESULTS AND DISCUSSION  Insolation and energy output  Solar insolation for the Kurdistan, Iraq region varies throughout the year and the total energy output for an available area to generate a 315 KW solar plant shown in Table1 [5]. Figure 4 shows the total energy output for the plant. Clearly the peaks in energy outputs occur in the months of summer June, July and August. The international airport electricity consumption demand and costs are shown in table 2.    Figure 4. Total energy output for available area                                   Figure 5 and 6 show the energy demand and cost of the energy at Sulaymanyah International Airport respectively.   A 315 KW solar energy plant could make available.    Table 1. Monthly energy output and total energy output using available area for the plant in Northern Iraq [7]  Month Unit (kWh) Cost (£) Jan  11400.92 Feb  12246.55 Mar  9472.78 Apr  8589.51 May  9954.53 Jun  14005.74 July  14324.53 Aug  15856.90 Sep  14021.53 Oct  10797.76 Nov  11800.71 Dec  10984.71 Total 9376221 143456.17  Table 2. Monthly energy consumption and its costsfor Sulaymanyah International Airport near Erbil [7]  Month Energy output (KWh/month) Jan 40574 Feb 41314 Mar 56298 Apr 58100 May 66634 Jun 70444 July 71691 Aug 71581 Sep 67252 Oct 56298 Nov 43734 Dec 38155 Total 682075  480                       Asian Journal of Science and Technology Vol. 5, Issue 8, pp. 479-481, August, 2014  020000040000060000080000010000001200000Jan Mar May July Sep NovEnergy Demand kWh/monthFigure 5:  Energy Consumption at Sulaymanyah International Airport   020004000600080001000012000140001600018000Jan Mar May July Sep NovCost per month  ( £ )Figure 6:  Cost of electricity at Sulaymanyah International Airport  This amount of conventional fossil fuel energy for the airport could be replaced by solar energy using photovoltaic cells and hence corresponding reductions on CO2 emissions can be estimated for this region. Determining the carbon footprint of one kilowatt-hour of electricity produced by the different methods is not exact, using as many life-cycle analyses, an average value for the different methods can be obtained as shown in table 3 below [7]. Taking the average values for the CO2 emissions for Coal gives 0.909 kg CO2 /kWh and for Solar (PV) gives 0.105kg CO2/KWh. Using these values an estimate of the reduction in CO2 emissions can be made.  Table 3. CO2 released for one kilowatt-hour produced by some power generation methods grams CO2 /kWh  Source Coal Natural Gas Oil and Diesel Solar / PV ADEME Carbon Inventory, low  800 430 - 60 ADEME Carbon Inventory, high 1,000 - - 150 PLC, Inc 889 517 894 - Oak Ridge National Labs  948 449 748 - AVERAGE 909 465 821 105  Energy Production Carbon Dioxide emissions (kg CO2) Fossil Fuel 682075  x  0.909 = 620006.18 kg Solar Photovoltaic 682075  x  0.105 = 71617.88 kg  Total Reduction in CO2 emissions 548388.3 kg Conclusions  Regions such as Sulaymanyahin Kurdistan, Iraq have a good number of sunshine hours a day throughout the whole year and are ideal places to utilise and harness the solar energy available from the sun. A solar plant with a capacity to generate around 7.3% of the airport’s yearly demand was found to have a potential to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions by 0.55 million kilograms a year. Considering this over a period of the average life span of a solar photovoltaic system of twenty years, gives rise to huge savings in CO2 emissions in the region of eleven million kilograms. These reductions will only occur if initial investment costs of setting up such a plant are incurred, however over the average life span of the solar plant almost half of the initial costs would be recovered. This shows that if reductions in harmful greenhouse gases are a serious target for the future of the world’s population then making use of renewable energy such as solar energy has huge potential. Use of multiple solar plants throughout the country would have a significant impact on CO2 emissions. Although other renewable energy sources have very low CO2 emissions, the use of solar energy is a more viable option in certain remote regions since these systems can be set up as stand-alone operations without a national grid structure. There is a urgent need to use alternative sources of energy that do not have adverse effects on the earth’s atmosphere. With continuous reduction in costs and increasing efficiencies in solar PV technology this method of energy generation has huge potential both for being environmentally friendly and as an attractive alternative to fossil fuels.  Acknowledgements  A. Azabany would like to thank Handren Azad, KRG Electricity Ministry for electricity consumption data at Sulaymanyah International Airport.  REFERENCES  1. S. J. Wenger and E.S. Rubin, ‘Economic implications of thermal energy storage for concentration solar thermal power, Renewable Energy, vol. 61, pp. 81-95, 2014. 2. Y.S. Cheng and C. Gau, ‘Efficiency improvement of organic solar cells with imprint of nanostructures by capillary force lithography,’ Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, vol. 120, Part B, pp. 566-571, 2014. 3.  A. Terakawa, ‘Review of thin-film silicon deposition techniques for high- efficiency solar cells developed at Panasonic/Sanyo,’ Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, vol. 119, pp. 204-208, (2013). 4.   J. Nelson, A. Gambhir and N. Ekins-Daukes, ‘Solar power for CO2 mitigation, Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Briefing paper No. 11, Imperial College London, January (2014). 5.  A. Azabany, K. Khan and W. Ahmed, ‘Cost estimation analysis for 315 kW grid-connected solar photovoltaic plant in Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq, ’submitted for publication. 6.  D. Archer and R. Pierrehumbert, ‘The warming papers, The Scientific Foundation for Climate Change Forecast’ Publishers: Wiley-Blackwell, pp3-20 (2011) 7.  KRG - Electricity Ministry in Sulaymanyah, Department of Airport Electricity Consumption. (Private communication) ******* 481                       Asian Journal of Science and Technology Vol. 5, Issue 8, pp. 479-481, August, 2014  

Reductions in Co2 emissions from electricity generation from solar energy at Sulaymanyah airport in Kurdistan, Iraq

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