Advanced Renewable Energy Sources

Gopal Nath Tiwari, Rajeev Kumar Mishra

• Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781782625780
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias físicas
• Subtopic: Energía

This book is an ideal reference text for teaching renewable energy to engineering and science students, as well as a reference book for scientists and professionals doing self study on the subject. The book has twelve chapters and starts with the definition and classification of renewable and non renewable energy and their status at global level. This chapter also contains the basic heat transfer mechanisms and laws of thermodynamics. It then deals with availability of solar radiation at different latitudes and energy and exergy analysis of flat plate collector, solar air collector, solar concentrator, evacuated tube collector, solar water heating system, solar distillation and solar cooker. The following chapter discusses the basics of semiconductor, its characteristics, working, characteristics of solar cell in dark and daylight situation, fundamentals of characteristic curves of semiconductor, fundamentals of PV module and array and some PVT systems. Detailed discussion on biomass, bio-fuels and biogas and their applications and the power produced by them, namely bio-power, is covered in the following chapters. Other renewable energy sources like hydropower, wind and geothermal are then covered as well as a chapter dealing with the working principle, basic theory and the capability to produce power from ocean thermal, tidal, wave and animal energy conversion systems. Subsequently, net CO2 mitigation, carbon credit, climate change and environmental impacts of all renewable energy resources are all covered followed by a discussion on the techno-economic feasibility of any energy sources as the backbone of its success and hence energy and economic analysis. The chapters deal the overall exergy of renewable energy sources by using the thermal and mechanical power and electrical energy as output. SI units are used throughout the book in solving various exercises in each chapter and conversion units of various physical and chemical parameters of metals and non-metals are also given in appendices.

CHAPTER 1

General Introduction

1.1 ENERGY: ITS DEFINITION AND BASIC CONCEPT

Energy is one of the major building blocks of society and it is needed to create goods from natural resources. Global economics development and improved standards of energy are complex processes that share a common denominator i.e. the availability of an adequate and reliable supply of clean energy. With an oil embargo in 1973, continuing with the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the Persian Gulf War of 1991, political events had made many people aware of how crucial clean energy is for everyday functioning of our society. The energy crises of the 1970s were almost forgotten by the 1980s, that period brought an increased awareness of other environmental issues. The global warming, acid rain and radioactive waste are still very much with us today, and each of these topics is related to our energy security.

In the present scenario all sectors of society, e.g. labour, environment, economics and international relations, etc. in addition to our own personal livings, i.e. housing, food, transportation, recreation and communication, etc., strongly depends on energy. The use of energy resources has relieved us from much drudgery and made our efforts more productive. Human beings once had to depend on their own muscle energy to provide the energy necessary to do the daily work. Today, muscle energy supplies less than 1% of the work done in the industrialised world.

Energy is a globally conserved quantity, i.e. the total amount energy in the universe is constant. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be transformed from one state to another. Two billiard balls colliding, for example, may come to rest, with the resulting energy becoming sound and perhaps a bit of heat at the point of collision.

Energy, environment and economic development are closely related. The proper use of energy requires consideration of social impact as well as technological ones. Indeed, sustained economic growth of a country in this century along with improvements in the quality of everyone’s lives may be possible only by the well planned and efficient use of fossil fuel and other resources and the development of new renewable energy technologies.

1.1.1 Basis Concept of Energy

In physics, energy is defined as “the capacity of a physical system to perform work”. The word is used by each of us with many different connotations, but in physics, it has a very definite meaning:

Work = Force × Displacement along the direction of force

or, “Work is the product of force and displacement through which the force acts”.

Mathematically, work can be expressed as;

where F is the acting force in “Newtons” and d is the displacement along the direction of force in “meters”.

A force of one Newton (N) acting through a distance of one meter in the same direction performs an amount of work equivalent to one joule (J). It is also important to note that work, the capacity for doing work and energy has the same units. A system may possess energy even when no work is being done. Since energy is measured by the total amount of work that the body can do, hence energy is expressed in the same unit of work as mentioned above.

1.2 DIFFERENT FORMS OF ENERGY

There is an important law known as the “Law of conservation of energy” that states that the total amount of energy in a closed system remains constant. Energy may change from one form to another, but the total amount in any closed system does not change. This law is extremely important in order to understand a variety of phenomenon. We will begin by identifying various forms of energy and transformations of energy from one form to another as mentioned below.

(a) Kinetic Energy (KE)

The kinetic energy of an object is the extra energy that it possesses due to its motion. It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its curren...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Copyright
• Preface
• Contents
• Dedication
• Authors’ Profiles
• Approximate Values of Some Constants in Renewable-Energy Sources
• Chapter 1 General Introduction
• Chapter 2 Solar Energy
• Chapter 3 Photovoltaic and Photovoltaic Thermal Systems
• Chapter 4 Biofuels
• Chapter 5 Biopower
• Chapter 6 Hydropower
• Chapter 7 Wind Energy
• Chapter 8 Geothermal Energy
• Chapter 9 Ocean Thermal, Tidal, Wave and Animal Energy
• Chapter 10 Sustainable Environment
• Chapter 11 Energy and Exergy Analysis
• Chapter 12 Economics of Renewable Energy
• Appendix - I
• Appendix - II
• Appendix - III
• Appendix - IV
• Appendix - V
• Appendix - VI
• Appendix - VII
• Appendix - VIII
• Glossary
• Subject Index