Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

IIn the most recent Climate Change Conference in Paris, renewable energy solutions have been identified as a critical target to combat the global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Due to this, there have been even more aggressive efforts to develop renewable energy technologies for immediate applications, especially with solar energy, and several European and North American Countries have put their road maps forward for renewable energy portfolios. While global issues primarily focuses on energetic, environmental and economic concerns, there is a strong need to develop sustainable energy solutions to address better design and analysis, efficiency, cost effectiveness, resources use, environment and energy security. This research aims to achieve these targets and develop novel integrated solar energy-based systems with effective heat storage options for multigeneration purposes. The research consists of four phases. The first phase focuses on the conceptual development and design of novel integrated multigeneration systems using diverse energy sources and their hybridization with solar energy. The systems provides various valuable outputs, e.g., electricity, space heating, water heating, steam, water cooling, air conditioning, hydrogen, desalination (fresh water and salt) and synthetic fuels (ammonia, methanol, ethanol, etc.). Another important aspect is the novel heat storage options as to be incorporated into the integrated multigeneration systems to offset the mismatch between demand and supply where renewable energy sources, such as solar energy, are used. The second phase deals with the modeling and analyses of processes that can be encountered in multigeneration systems, covering micro- and macro-level and multi-dimensional modeling; and thermodynamic (energetically and exergetically), fluid flow, chemical, thermochemical, catalytic and non-catalytic, electrochemical, photochemical, heat and mass transfer analyses (in both steady and unsteady forms depending on the process). The third phase involves lab-scale experiments and proof of concept testing on various designs of proposed systems (e.g., heat engine systems) and their thermal components. Also, key processes of these multigeneration systems are studied in more detail through proof of concept testing. The fourth phase deals with multi-objective optimization and performance assessment (through energy and exergy efficiencies, and other performance metrics), as well as improvement of the multigeneration systems developed and tested. This is done based on multi-objective criteria including minimization of exergy destructions, costs and environmental impact, and increasing efficiency and sustainability, etc. Economic, environmental, ecological and sustainability performances are studied through cost parameters, indexes, impact criteria and life cycle impact categories.