• Advances in Energy Research
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.121-146
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• 2016

This study is concerned with the analysis of two renewable technologies for electric energy production: wind energy and photovoltaic energy. The two technologies were assessed and compared by economic point of view, by using selected indicators characterized by a clear calculation approach, requirement of information easy to be collected, clear, but even complete, interpretation of results. The used economic indicators are Levelized Cost of Energy, $CO_2$ abatement cost and fossil fuel saving specific cost; these last two specifically aimed at evaluating the different capabilities that renewable technologies have to cut down direct $CO_2$ emissions and to avoid fossil fuel extraction. The two technologies were compared also from the environmental point of view by applying Life Cycle Assessment approach and using the environmental impact categories from the Eco-indicator'95 method. The economic analysis was developed by taking into account different energy system sizes and different geographic areas in order to compare different European conditions (Italy, Germany and Denmark) in term of renewable resource availability and market trend. The environmental analysis was developed comparing two particular types of PV and wind plants, respectively residential and micro-wind turbine, located in Italy. According to the three calculated economic indicators, the wind energy emerged as more favorable than PV energy. From the environmental point of view, both the technologies are able to provide savings for almost all the considered environmental impact categories. The proposed approach, based on the use of economic and environmental indicators may be useful in supporting the policies and the decision making procedures concerned with the promotion and use of renewables, in reference to the specific geographic, economic and temporal conditions.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.193-200
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• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the energy saving effects and characteristics of plant growth in a greenhouse with an aluminum multi-layer curtain compared to a greenhouse with non-woven fabric. Method: The dimensions of both greenhouses $43m{\times}3.6m{\times}8m(L{\times}H{\times}W)$, and both used hot air heater systems for maintaining a constant temperature $15^{\circ}C$. Heating characteristics such as solar intensity, inside and ambient temperatures, and fuel consumption were measured and analyzed. Results: The changes of average temperature of both greenhouses during a 15-days (December 06 - 20) showed approximately $26^{\circ}C$ at around 2 pm when the ambient temperature was highest. The greenhouses were set by the heater to keep a temperature of $15^{\circ}C$ from 4 pm to 8 am the following day. The average heat loss (for 15 days) from the greenhouse with an aluminum multi-layer curtain was $161.2-268.4kJ/m^2{\cdot}h$ during the daytime and $152.3-198.1kJ/m^2{\cdot}h$ during the nighttime. The average heat loss (for 15 days) from the greenhouse with non-woven fabric was $155.7-258.9kJ/m^2{\cdot}h$ during the daytime and $144.9-207.0kJ/m^2{\cdot}h$ during the nighttime. The total heat loss (for one day) from the non-woven fabric system was $7,960kJ/m^2$($2,876kJ/m^2$ during the daytime, $5,084kJ/m^2$ during the nighttime). The heat supply over 36 days for the non-woven fabric system was higher than the aluminum multi-layer curtain system by $616.3-65,079.4kJ/m^2$. Conclusions: These results suggest that a greenhouse with an aluminum multi-layer curtain could save energy usage by 35% over a greenhouse with non-woven fabric.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.331-343
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• 2005

Development of hydrogen station system is an important technology to commercialize fuel cells and fuel cell powered vehicles. Generally, hydrogen station consists of hydrogen production process including desulfurizer, reformer, water gas shift (WGS) reactor and pressure swing adsorption (PSA) apparatus, and post-treatment process including compressor, storage and distributer. In this review, we investigate the R&D trends and prospects of hydrogen station in domestic and foreign countries for opening the hydrogen economy society. Indeed, the reforming of fossil fuels for hydrogen production will be essential technology until the ultimate process that may be water hydrolysis using renewable energy source such as solar energy, wind force etc, will be commercialized in the future. Hence, we also review the research trends on unit technologies such as the desulfurization, reforming reaction of fossil fuels, water gas shift reaction and hydrogen separation for hydrogen station applications.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.61 no.2
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• pp.202-207
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• 2023

In the case of driving water electrolysis by receiving surplus electricity from solar and wind power generation, operation and stopping must be repeated according to weather fluctuations. When the PEMWE(Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Water Electrolysis) is driven and stopped, the PEM fuel cell is in the same state as the PEM fuel cell due to the residual hydrogen and oxygen, and the high potential of the water electrolysis formed during operation is highly likely to cause degradation of the electrode and membrane even during stopping. In this study, in order to check how much degradation of the electrode and membrane progresses during the repeated driving/shutdown process of PEM water electrolysis, the performance decrease was measured by changing the number of driving/shutdown for 144 hours. Changes in electrode catalyst active area, hydrogen permeability and fluorine emision rate of membranes were analyzed to measure changes in the properties of electrodes and polymer membranes. Overall, the PEMWE performance decreased as the number of stops increased. When stopped 5 times in 144 hours, the IrO_x catalyst activity decreased by more than 30%, and the hydrogen permeability increased by 80%, confirming that both the electrode and the membrane were deteriorated.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.41 no.7
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• pp.481-491
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• 2014

The power production using renewable energy is more important because of a limited amount of fossil fuel and the problem of global warming. A concentrative photovoltaic system comes into the spotlight with high energy production, since the rate of power production using solar energy is proliferated. These systems, however, need to sophisticated tracking methods to give the high power production. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical tracking system using modular Bayesian networks and a naive Bayes classifier. The Bayesian networks can respond flexibly in uncertain situations and can be designed by domain knowledge even when the data are not enough. Bayesian network modules infer the weather states which are classified into nine classes. Then, naive Bayes classifier selects the most effective method considering inferred weather states and the system makes a decision using the rules. We collected real weather data for the experiments and the average accuracy of the proposed method is 93.9%. In addition, comparing the photovoltaic efficiency with the pinhole camera system results in improved performance of about 16.58%.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.65-79
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• 2019

The study attempted to estimate the optimal facility capacity by combining renewable energy sources that can be connected with gas CHP in industrial complexes. In particular, we reviewed industrial complexes subject to energy use plan from 2013 to 2016. Although the regional designation was excluded, Sejong industrial complex, which has a fuel usage of 38 thousand TOE annually and a high heat density of $92.6Gcal/km^2{\cdot}h$, was selected for research. And we analyzed the optimal operation model of CHP Hybrid System linking fuel cell and photovoltaic power generation using HOMER Pro, a renewable energy hybrid system economic analysis program. In addition, in order to improve the reliability of the research by analyzing not only the heat demand but also the heat demand patterns for the dominant sectors in the thermal energy, the main supply energy source of CHP, the economic benefits were added to compare the relative benefits. As a result, the total indirect heat demand of Sejong industrial complex under construction was 378,282 Gcal per year, of which paper industry accounted for 77.7%, which is 293,754 Gcal per year. For the entire industrial complex indirect heat demand, a single CHP has an optimal capacity of 30,000 kW. In this case, CHP shares 275,707 Gcal and 72.8% of heat production, while peak load boiler PLB shares 103,240 Gcal and 27.2%. In the CHP, fuel cell, and photovoltaic combinations, the optimum capacity is 30,000 kW, 5,000 kW, and 1,980 kW, respectively. At this time, CHP shared 275,940 Gcal, 72.8%, fuel cell 12,390 Gcal, 3.3%, and PLB 90,620 Gcal, 23.9%. The CHP capacity was not reduced because an uneconomical alternative was found that required excessive operation of the PLB for insufficient heat production resulting from the CHP capacity reduction. On the other hand, in terms of indirect heat demand for the paper industry, which is the dominant industry, the optimal capacity of CHP, fuel cell, and photovoltaic combination is 25,000 kW, 5,000 kW, and 2,000 kW. The heat production was analyzed to be CHP 225,053 Gcal, 76.5%, fuel cell 11,215 Gcal, 3.8%, PLB 58,012 Gcal, 19.7%. However, the economic analysis results of the current electricity market and gas market confirm that the return on investment is impossible. However, we confirmed that the CHP Hybrid System, which combines CHP, fuel cell, and solar power, can improve management conditions of about KRW 9.3 billion annually for a single CHP system.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.46-55
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• 2004

This paper presents a high-frequency ZVS-PWM boost chopper-fed DC-DC converter with a single active auxiliary edge resonant snubber in the load-side which can be designed for power conditioners such as solar photovoltaic generation, fuel cell generation, battery and super capacitor energy storages. Its principle operation in steady-state is described in addition to a prototype setup. The experimental results of ZVS-PWM boost chopper-fed DC-DC converter proposed here, are evaluated and verified with a practical design model in terms of its switching voltage and current waveforms, the switching v-i trajectory, the temperature performance of IGBT module, the actual power conversion efficiency and the EMI of radiated and conducted emissions. And then discussed and compared with the hard switching scheme from an experimental point of view. Finally, this paper proposes a practical method to suppress parasitic oscillation due to the active auxiliary resonant switch at ZCS turn off mode transition with the aid of an additional lossless clamping diode loop, and reduced the EMI conducted emission in this paper.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.99-103
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• 2005

In this paper, a novel circuit topology of a three-winding coupling inductor-assisting a high-frequency PWM boost chopper type DC-DC power converter with a high boost voltage conversion ratio and low switch voltage stress is proposed for the new energy interfaced DC power conditioner in solar photovoltaic and fuel cell generation systems. The operating principle in a steady state is described by using its equivalent circuits under the practical condition of energy processing of a lossless capacitive snubber. The newly-proposed power MOSFET boost chopper type DC-DC power converter with the three-winding coupled inductor type transformer and a single lossless capacitor snubber is built and tested for an output power of 500W. Utilizing the lower voltage and internal resistance power MOSFET switch in the proposed PWM boost chopper type DC-DC power converter can reduce the conduction losses of the active power switch compared to the conventional model. Therefore, the total actual power conversion efficiency under a condition of the nominal rated output power is estimated to be 81.1 ％, which is 3.7％ higher than the conventional PWM boost chopper DC power conversion circuit topology.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2014

This review article summarizes photoelectrochemical water splitting using gallium nitride (GaN). GaN materials have been studied as novel photoelectrode material due to its chemical stability and easy band gap engineering. Unlike other semiconductor materials that are easily corroded in strongly acidic or alkaline electrolyte, n-type GaN is chemically stable enough to be used as photoanode in oxygen evolution reaction. Furthermore, studies on p-type GaN have been recently reported. This review briefly discusses problems that need to be solved before GaN materials find widespread use in solar fuel application.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.256-261
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• 2012

Recently, many photovoltaic systems (PV systems) including solar parks and PV farms have been built to prepare for the post fossil fuel era. To investigate the degradation process of the PV systems and thus, efficiently operate PV systems, there is a need to visually monitor PV systems in the range of infrared ray through the Internet. For efficient visual monitoring, this paper explores a multithreaded implementation of a recently developed HEVC standard whose compression efficiency is almost two times higher than H.264. For an efficient parallel implementation under a meshbased 64 multicore system, this work takes into account various design choices which can solve potential problems of a two-dimensional interconnects-based 64 multicore system. These problems may have not occurred in a small-scale multicore system based on a simple bus network. Through extensive evaluation, this paper shows that, for an efficient multithreaded implementation of HEVC intra prediction in a mesh-based multicore system, much effort needs to be made to optimize communications among processing cores. Thus, this work provides three design choices regarding communications, i.e., main thread core location, cache home policy, and maximum coding unit size. These design choices are shown to improve the overall parallel performance of the HEVC intra prediction algorithm by up to 42%, achieving a 7 times higher speed-up.