Sharif Digital Repository

The energy supply system of Uzbekistan is not well positioned to meet the rapidly rising domestic energy demand of this country. Uzbekistan's current energy supply system is outdated and has very low diversity, as most of its energy comes from natural gas. In addition to producing immense amounts of greenhouse gas and environmental pollution, this situation is untenable considering the eventual depletion of fossil fuel reserves of this country. Uzbekistan's renewable energy sector is highly undeveloped, a situation that can be attributed to the lack of coherent policies for the advancement of renewable power and the low price of natural gas. However, this country has significant untapped... 

While Afghanistan's power sector is almost completely dependent on fossil fuels, it still cannot meet the rising power demand of this country. Deploying a combination of renewable energy systems with hydrogen production as the excess energy storage mechanism could be a sustainable long-term approach for addressing some of the energy problems of Afghanistan. Since Badakhshan is known to have a higher average wind speed than any other Afghan province, in this study, a technical, economic, and carbon footprint assessment was performed to investigate the potential for wind power and hydrogen production in this province. Wind data of four stations in Badakhshan were used for technical assessment... 

In this study, the performance of a system consisting of an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) for generating power and an electrolyzer for producing hydrogen with a zeotropic mixture as working fluid to recover waste heat in a geothermal flash-binary cycle is investigated from energy and exergy point of view. The study also investigates the effect of using zeotropic mixtures with different compositions as the ORC's working fluid rather than pure fluids. Using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, the optimization is performed to maximize the power production of the entire system. The results show that using the combination of pentane with other pure fluids as working fluid led to... 

Increasing energy demand has led to a substantial growth in the use of wind energy across the world, which can be attributed to the low initial and running costs and rapid and easy deployment of this technology. The development of hydrogen from wind energy is an excellent way to store the excess wind power produced, as the produced hydrogen can be used not only as clean fuel but also as input for various industries. Considering the good wind potentials of Yazd province, the variety of industries that are active in this area, and the central location of this province in Iran, which gives it ample access to major transport routes and other industrial hubs, hydrogen production from wind power... 

The emerging environmental consequences of overdependence on fossil fuels have pushed many countries to invest in clean and renewable sources of power. Countries like Iran where these sources can be found in abundance can take advantage of this potential to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. This study investigated the feasibility of the standalone use of a hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) to power buildings in the Bostegan village in the Hormozgan province of Iran. Technical, economic, and environmental assessments were performed with the help of the Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER) software, and the optimal configuration for the system components was... 

Hydrogen as an energy carrier can play a significant role in reducing environmental emissions if it is produced from renewable energy resources. This research aims to assess hydrogen production from wind energy considering environmental, economic, and technical aspect for the East Azerbaijan province of Iran. The economic assessment is performed by calculation of payback period, levelized cost of hydrogen, and levelized cost of electricity. Since uncertainty in the power output of wind turbines may affect the payback period, all calculations are performed for four different turbine degradation rates. While it is common in the literature to choose the wind turbine based on a single criterion,... 

In the original publication of the article, the caption to Figs. 1 and 2 must be updated with the source line as below. Fig. 1 Schematic diagram of the proposed simultaneous power/hydrogen production system reproduced with kind permission from: Han J, Wang X, Xu J, Yi N, Talesh SSA. Thermodynamic analysis and optimization of an innovative geothermal-based organic Rankine cycle using zeotropic mixtures for power and hydrogen production. Int J Hydrog Energy. 2020;45(15):8282–99 Fig. 2 Geographical characteristics of Sabalan geothermal power plant [41] reproduced with kind permission from: Han J, Wang X, Xu J, Yi N, Talesh SSA. Thermodynamic analysis and optimization of an innovative... 

Due to population growth and industrial development, Iran is facing the challenge of energy supply in various industrial, power plant, agricultural, and residential sectors. While most of Iran's energy supply comes from fossil fuels, these fuels have devastating environmental impacts. Therefore, Iran has to invest more in its renewable energy sources. Given that many locations of Iran have significant wind, solar, and geothermal potential, this study used a combination of SWOT, multicriteria decision-making approaches, and game theory to identify the best renewable energy development plans for the country. The Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) technique was applied to weight... 

An API standard drilling fluid was investigated from laminar to turbulent flow conditions using an in-house-built viscometer at speeds from 200 to 1600 RPM. A power-based method was applied to obtain the apparent viscosity and the shear stress of the water-based drilling mud (WBM) in the annulus of the viscometer. Then, a MATLAB optimization program was developed to obtain model parameters for five rheology models integrated in a generalized Herschel-Bulkley-Extended (HBE) model and two widely used 4-parameter models in drilling industry. It is found that the Bingham, Cross, and HBE rheology models have precisely matched the WBM measurements in the viscometer. A generalized Reynolds number... 

The emerging environmental consequences of overdependence on fossil fuels have pushed many countries to invest in clean and renewable sources of power. Countries like Iran where these sources can be found in abundance can take advantage of this potential to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. This study investigated the feasibility of the standalone use of a hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) to power buildings in the Bostegan village in the Hormozgan province of Iran. Technical, economic, and environmental assessments were performed with the help of the Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER) software, and the optimal configuration for the system components was... 

Due to population growth and industrial development, Iran is facing the challenge of energy supply in various industrial, power plant, agricultural, and residential sectors. While most of Iran's energy supply comes from fossil fuels, these fuels have devastating environmental impacts. Therefore, Iran has to invest more in its renewable energy sources. Given that many locations of Iran have significant wind, solar, and geothermal potential, this study used a combination of SWOT, multicriteria decision-making approaches, and game theory to identify the best renewable energy development plans for the country. The Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) technique was applied to weight... 

A technical-economic assessment was carried out in this study to determine the possibilities for wind and solar power generation in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. The results showed that most of the province has a solar irradiance of over 400 W/m2, and also showed that wind and solar power generated in the province can be up to twice as cheap as the official price of renewable power in Afghanistan. The most suitable site for solar and hydrogen production was found to be Laškar Gāh, where solar and hydrogen can be produced at a cost of 0.066 $/kWh and 2.1496 $/kg-H2, respectively. In terms of wind power production and hydrogen production from wind, the most suitable site was Sangīn, where... 

Drying is a common practice for delaying deterioration, preserving quality, and easier prolonged storage of agricultural products. According to the climatic and geographical conditions of Arsanjan County, Fars, Iran. So far, many studies have been conducted on the design and use of various barriers on absorber plates with the aim of increasing heat exchange and subsequently increasing the efficiency of air heaters and solar dryers. However, the effect of using the metal of the sewing machine bobbin on the performance of these dryers has not been studied yet. Therefore, in this study, for the first time, this metal and also pipes containing PCM (phase change material) were used as a barrier... 

With the advent of new technologies and globalization of business, supply chains have turned into indispensable tools for gaining competitive advantage. The application of new technologies like blockchain can benefit sustainable energy supply chains by improving chain and logistics operations in the areas of trust, transparency and accountability, cooperation, information sharing, financial exchanges, and supply chain integration. However, the efforts to adopt such technologies in supply chains tend to face many challenges and challenges, which can seriously threaten their success. Therefore, it is crucial to carefully examine the challenges to blockchain technology application. This... 

With the advent of new technologies and globalization of business, supply chains have turned into indispensable tools for gaining competitive advantage. The application of new technologies like blockchain can benefit sustainable energy supply chains by improving chain and logistics operations in the areas of trust, transparency and accountability, cooperation, information sharing, financial exchanges, and supply chain integration. However, the efforts to adopt such technologies in supply chains tend to face many challenges and challenges, which can seriously threaten their success. Therefore, it is crucial to carefully examine the challenges to blockchain technology application. This... 

Power consumption of wellbore drilling in oil and gas exploitations count for 40% of total costs, hence power saving of WBM (water-based mud) by adding different concentrations of Al2O3, TiO2 and SiO2 nanoparticles is investigated here. A high-speed Taylor–Couette system (TCS) was devised to operate at speeds 0–1600 RPM to simulate power consumption of wellbore drilling using nanofluids in laminar to turbulent flow conditions. The TCS control unit uses several sensors to record current, voltage and rotational speed and Arduino microprocessors to process outputs including rheological properties and power consumption. Total power consumption of the TCS was correlated with a second-order... 

Observing the growing energy demand of modern societies, many countries have rec-ognized energy security as a looming problem and renewable energies as a solution to this issue. Renewable hydrogen production is an excellent method for the storage and transfer of energy generated by intermittent renewable sources such as wind and solar so that they can be used at a place and time of our choosing. In this study, the suitability of 15 cities in Fars province, Iran, for renewable hydrogen production was investigated and compared by the use of multiple multi-criteria decision-making methods including ARAS, SAW, CODAS, and TOPSIS. The obtained rankings were aggregated by rank averaging, Borda... 

This paper reports on the synthesis of ZnO nanowires (NWs), as well asthe compound nanostructures of nanoparticles (NPs) and nanowires (NWs+NPs) with different coating layers of NPs on the top of NWs and their integration in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). In compound nanostructures, NWs offer direct electrical pathways for fast electron transfer, and the NPs of ZnOdispread and fill the interstices between the NWs of ZnO, offering a huge surface area for enough dye anchoring and promoting light harvesting. A significant photocurrent density of 2.64mA/cm2 and energy conversion efficiency of 1.43% was obtained with NWs-based DSSCs. The total solar-to-electric energy conversion efficiency... 

Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloys (7xxx series Al alloys) are extensively used for their superior mechanical and corrosion performance. These properties are microstructure-sensitive and highly dependent on the formation, growth and coarsening of precipitates. To date, a wide variety of ageing procedures have been developed to tailor the evolved microstructures so as to yield a good combination of mechanical capacity and corrosion resistance of 7xxx series Al alloys. Among these methods, isothermal ageing, multi-stage ageing, non-isothermal ageing, retrogression and re-ageing (RRA), and stress ageing (i.e. creep ageing) are the most significant. In the present review, all of these approaches are... 

After an earthquake, the residual stiffness and strength of structural elements are typically estimated based on a qualitative visual inspection of cracks that is prone to error. In this paper a new approach is proposed to automatically estimate the updated stiffness and strength of damaged unreinforced masonry walls by characterization of crack patterns by a mathematical index. It is shown that structural and textural fractal dimensions of a crack pattern reflect the extent of cracking and the type of cracking or crushing, i.e., whether the cracks pass through joints or whether bricks have been damaged and crushed. Using results of six quasi-static cyclic tests on unreinforced brick masonry...