Potential Greenhouse Gas Mitigation for Converting High Moisture Food Waste into Bio-Coal from Hydrothermal Carbonisation in India, Europe and China

How Fast to Avoid Carbon Emissions: A Holistic View on the RES, Storage and Non-RES Replacement in Romania

The European Union targets aim to replace the non-renewable energy sources (non-RES) of coal, oil and gas (COG) generation with RES and storage (RES-S). The replacement of COG-generating units will lead to a decrease in CO₂ emissions and a better living environment. Starting from this desideratum, in this paper, we create several scenarios to replace COG in Romania with RES-S, reconsider future energy mixes and engage with a more creative planning in order to meet the clean energy transition path. The energy shortages, especially in European countries after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, led many governments (including the Romanian, Polish, etc.) to think more about short-term supply issues and less about medium- and long-term power system planning. However, the decision makers of the European power systems have to decide how fast to avoid firing coal, how fast to adopt RES and how fast to invest in flexibility sources, including storage stations to enable a higher integration of RES. Therefore, in this paper, a holistic view to envision the RES and non-RES contribution to the load coverage in Romania for a smooth transition to a low-carbon economy is provided. The results show that an initial mix of wind, photovoltaic (PV) and storage systems is preferable to substitute 600 MW of installed power in coal-based power plants. Furthermore, the case of Poland-the European country with over 70% coal in its generation portfolio-is also presented as it can serve as a good example.

A Case Study on Renewable Energy Sources, Power Demand, and Policies in the States of South India—Development of a Thermoelectric Model

This work aims to perform a holistic review regarding renewable energy mix, power production approaches, demand scenarios, power policies, and investments with respect to clean energy production in the southern states of India. Further, a thermoelectric-generator model is proposed to meet rural demands using a proposed solar dish collector technology. The proposed model is based on the idea of employing a parabolic concentrator and a thermoelectric (TE) module to generate electricity directly from the sun’s energy. A parabolic dish collector with an aperture of 1.11 m is used to collect sunlight and concentrate it onto a receiver plate with an area of 1.56 m in the proposed TE solar concentrator. The concentrated solar thermal energy is converted directly into electrical energy by using a bismuth telluride (BiTe)-based TE module mounted on the receiver plate. A rectangular fin heatsink, coupled with a fan, is employed to remove heat from the TE module’s cool side, and a tracking device is used to track the sun continuously. The experimental results show considerable agreement with the mathematical model as well as its potential applications. Solar thermal power generation plays a crucial part in bridging the demand–supply gap for electricity, and it can be achieved through rural electrification using the proposed solar dish collector technology, which typically has a 10 to 25 kW capacity per dish and uses a Stirling engine to generate power. Here the experimentation work generates a voltage of 11.6 V, a current of 0.7 A, and a power of 10.5 W that can be used for rural electrification, especially for domestic loads.