Sharif Digital Repository

The short life of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cells is one of the critical criteria to their commercialization. A longer operation life time should be achieved to reach high reliability, low $/kWh cost and to use fuel cells as economical alternative energy systems.Therefore,diagnosing degradation mechanisms and the causes of power loss in fuel cell life time is of great importance. Operating conditions affect output power density and performance degradation. To achieve maximum power generation through fuel cell life time, a model is needed which is able to estimate power density and performance degradation simultaneously regarding to operating conditions. In present work, a... 

The energy systems efficiency is a great issue confront power plants professionals. Besides using high-tech components in power plants, plant operation optimization can significantly improve energy efficiency and economic performance, as efficiency of plant components generally depends on operating conditions. In addition, system preventive maintenance can reduce plant operation and failure costs, however it is also costly when done frequently. Therefore, optimizing operating conditions and preventive maintenance intervals can minimize the expected total cost of plant due to operation, failures and preventive maintenances. In recent years, the use of optimization models to determine plant... 

The performance of the power plant decreases during its lifetime and deviates from its design and initial operation conditions; Maintenance issues, variety of operational patterns, market limitations and financial goals have been caused this situation. Knowing the appropriate actions and finding the optimal operation conditions of the power plant can support the system to restore its initial operational performance and bring it closer to its design condition. In this research, with historical data helps of a steam thermal power plant in Kermanshah, unsupervised machine learning techniques have been used to identify operational patterns, which lead to the identification of optimal operating... 

This study is a report on the fabrication of a novel single-chamber micro-structure microbial fuel cell consisting of spiral anode chamber. A 3×3 cm plexiglass plate with 1 mm thickness was used as main body. A spiral microchannel (1 mm in width and 226 mm in length) was cut using a laser beam as an anodic compartment. Two types of microbial fuel cells with the same anode electrode (stainless steel mesh) and different cathode electrodes (stainless steel mesh and carbon cloth) were constructed in order to investigate the effect of cathode electrode material on microbial fuel cell performance. In both batch and continuous mode, higher power density was obtained by microbial fuel cell with... 

Lately, some investigators of polymer engineering group are working to do continuous polymer solution casting process, rather than batch process for flat sheet membrane production. For this, they use a doctor blade system but, they faced some problems during coating process. From experimental observations of the studied system, some inappropriate vorticities were seen. That’s why the system forms a non-uniform film of the solution. Air bubbling occurs at system exit which is undesirable as well. In this study simulation and optimization has been done for forming thin film in doctor blade system. COMSOL Multiphysics 4.3b was used in purpose of simulating which works on numerical finite... 

Chemical industries are associated with hazardous chemicals and extreme operating conditions. Unsafe events can incur dramatic costs in terms of the loss of life, financial penalties and damages to the environment. Therefore, design of industrial processes which can be operated safely over a wide range of operating conditions is vital. Nevertheless, operation of industrial processes is a strong function of their design. If the process is initially poorly designed, ensuring its safe operation, if not impossible, would require costly modifications at the operational phases. This observation is due to the fact that process design decisions (e.g. design of process equipment) often have a... 

Today, the global environmental restrictions as well as; energy problems have directed researchers toward developing ideas of producing a clean liquid fuel from coal or natural gas as a major research topic. In this regard, a special attention is paid to the dimethyl ether (DME) as a clean material containing 34.8% oxygen possessing enough positive potential to replace the diesel and LPG fuels. One of the most economic routes for producing the DME is known to be the direct conversion of the synthesis gases and carbon dioxide first to the methanol and then its dehydration to the DME. Moreover, the DME is not limited to a particular country or resource area since small reservoirs of natural... 

Textile industry is one of the biggest consumers of water in the world. Effluents of textile industry ordinarily have huge rate of dye compounds which are toxic and persistent in environment. In case which they did not treat and discharged in the environment, they can create cancer, poisoning and etc. Finding efficient, economic and fast method for treating of these effluents is an important factor on the management. Combination of ultrafiltration membrane and reverse osmosis processes, has taken into consideration as an efficient and fast method of treatment of textile effluents in recent years. One of the fundamental problems of this process is the high costs of operation and chemical... 

Researchers have paid more attention to greenhouse cultivation, due to the exacerbation of food and water crisis. Higher production with lower cost could be achieved through greenhouse climate control (temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide concentration). However, greenhouse climate control is a challenging task, because greenhouses have highly interactive nonlinear dynamics and model uncertainties and are subject to input saturation. In light of the fact that Iran is a country with a warm and arid climate, tunnel greenhouses equipped with evaporative cooling system are very common in Iran. Accordingly, this type of greenhouse is considered for modelling, simulation and control in this... 

Combined cycle power plants consist of three main sections, namely gas turbine, Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG) and steam turbine. Occurring failure in HRSG causes the steam turbine trip, so the reliability assessment of HRSG has a great importance for forecasting the probability of occurring failure and also reducing failure causes. In this project, the reliability of HRSG considering effects of aging phenomenon, maintenance and, environmental and operational conditions on reliability is modeled. Afterward a method to estimate the model parameters is introduced. Using present method, failure data of six HRSGs of a plant each with a capacity of 50 MW is analyzed and the model parameters... 

This thesis studies the economic feasibility of replacing a throttling valve with an expansion turbine in a city gate station for the purpose of distributed electricity generation through exergy recovery from pressurized natural gas. Conventionally, high pressure natural gas stream enters a pressure reduction station with its physical exergy completely destroyed in an irreversible Joule-Thompson effect of a throttling valve. To avoid hydrate formation at the outlet of the turboexpander, the inlet stream should be preheated. Although pressure reduction stations are inherently subject to seasonal fluctuations of inlet natural gas pressure and flow rate, the preheating temperature should be... 

The aim of this project is Industrial Solvents (White Spirit) producing in Tehran Refinery. For this manner “Wild Naphtha” from Gasoil Hydrotreater and Kerosene Hydrotreater Units was chosen as feed stock for solvents preparation. In addition, Pentane Recovery Column is selected for Simulation and Optimization based on Wild Naphtha. As a Result, Abadan White Spirit 402 and 410 has been produced and a side stream which is full of Aromatic is obtained. Simultaneously, Tray Hydraulics and Solvents production in different cases (Various Pressure and different Split Ratio of Feed Stock) are evaluated, so optimum Tower process conditions such as pressure, Temperature and Split Ratio of Feed Stock...