Sharif Digital Repository

Fossil fuel usage caused global warming and other environmental problems. Recently, biofuels are considered as an important alternative. However, the efficient usage of water and energy in their production may accelerate their diffusion. ETBE is a kind of oxidizing fuel additive that can be biologically produced from the ethanol reaction. High water and energy consumption in the production and separation process is still a challenge. In this work, the ETBE production from lignocellulosic feed are considered. Then, the effect of different parameters are investigated by performing sensitivity analysis. In the next step, the optimal pathway of water and energy use in the production of ETBE are... 

The population growth and scarcity of resources such as water and land make the food security as one the most important critical priorities in the world. Development of food production in greenhousesinstead of the traditional agriculture in rural areas is an efficient and applicable approache to reach food security and optimum use of water resources. However, this requires more capital. An important part of this cost is related to the cost of energy supply for heating and cooling in order to provide a suitable condition for the growth of plants. Optimal design of a rural energy supply and optimal operation of existing greenhouses to maximize the benefit of the greenhouse owners and to... 

The building sector consumes a significant amount of potable water. It also consumes 30-40% of the world's end-use energy, and this will be even higher, considering the amount of energy consumed in water and wastewater treatment processes. In Iran, buildings account for about 35% of end-use energy consumption. Therefore, the focus on green buildings has increased as a response to growing concerns about climate change and global warming. This study seeks to develop an optimal model to meet the energy and water demand of a building considering the water and energy nexus. This model has been developed for the Energy Engineering Department in order to become a green building. As a result, the... 

Due to increasing population and economic growth that has improved the living standards of human societies, the resources of the three sectors of water, energy, and food are in short supply. The close connection between these three parts requires integrated policy-making. In this research, for an integrated water, energy, and food system, an integer linear programming model has been developed for the optimal selection of technologies, their capacity, and their water and energy flow. Agricultural development policies include the construction of greenhouses and the use of renewable energy technologies and wastewater treatment technology to supply energy and water to the domestic and... 

The rapid increasment of energy carriers and investment expenses in recent years, has increased the costs of energy demand and attracted those interested in consume reduction and efficiency using modern cutting-edge technologies. This research intends to design a general framework for optimization and energy and water demanding management studies in a sample region, regarding the new concept, energy hub.Thus as the first step, the existing industries and technologies with their thermal and electrical demands is considered as the first hub and wastewater treatment plant with its other equipments and thermal and electrical demands is considered as the second hub. The main issue in the modeling... 

In a steel production plan primary resources entered the process are converted to high value products and byproducts. To this end, resources need to pass several consecutive process that require utility streams. One could not achieve the optimum operation of an industrial process unless they maximize the product and minimize the utility and waste. Therefore, it is important to consider the process stream integrated. The aim of this work is to find the optimum consumption of water and energy in a steel production and to calculate the potential reduction in water and energy resource destruction. Present work could be define a mathematical programing problem in which water users and all streams... 

Environmental and economic scarcity of resources are the most important challenges of industry sector. Iran confronted with lack of sufficient water resources and proper management and faces with drought and its environmental and economic consequences. It is a complicated challenge to provide the water demand without any damage to the ecosystem and it needs to do social, economic and environmental assessments. Wastewater treatment (water recycling) is an alternative option for supplying water demand. Wastewater treatment system (collecting, transportation to the treatment plant, wastewater treatment, and discharge) designed in order to solve hygienic and health issues in first place, but it... 

Energy and water are valuable resources that underpin human prosperity and are to a large extent, interdependent. Water is used in multiple phases of energy production and electricity generation, from fossil-fuel extraction, transport and processing,irrigating crops for biofuels, to providing cooling water for thermoelectric power plants. On the other hand, all such processes, alongside with other industrial and municipal water uses, require sufficient energy required to extract, treat, and deliver water.The key objective of this project is to maximize both water and energy economic potentials while considering the environmental impacts associated with their consumption. In this regard,... 

In recent years, there has been the extensive researches on energy and water efficiency due to the increasing stress on these resources. Therefore, the water-energy nexus in large industries, especially power plants, has become very important. In the present study, the water and energy nexus has been analyzed using energy analysis tools, exergy, economic and environmental in a combined cycle power plant. The nexus are observed in the boiler blow-downs, leakage of steam traps, cooling of the air entering the compressor and injection of steam into the combustion chamber, which have been studied in different scenarios to improve water and energy consumption and reduce environmental impact. In... 

Water-energy nexus approach is any water and energy interaction in a system to provide sustainable usage of resources. Quantitative model of interaction of water and energy in analyzing water-energy nexus is not comprehensive approach for solving all challenges facing this section. Qualitative analysis of water-energy nexus provides optimization and prioritization solutions in water and energy systems from other aspects. In present thesis two quantitative and qualitative aspect of water-energy nexus is considered. Initially, for quantitative modeling, interaction and relation of water and energy (watergy) with six principles to form WatErgy Reference System (WERS) was presented. The... 

Iran, as a major contributor in Oil and Gas resources, plays a significant role in global energy supply chain. Iran was the fifth-largest crude oil producer in OPEC in 2020 and the third-largest natural gas producer in the world in 2019. It holds some of the world’s largest deposits of proved oil and natural gas reserves, ranking as the world’s third-largest and second-largest reserve holder of oil and natural gas, respectively, in 2020. At the end of 2020, Iran accounted for 25% of oil reserves in the Middle East and 12% in the world. Currently, ten refineries are responsible to refine oil and produce petroleum products to meet the market demands. Especially, the construction of Persian... 

The development of computers and their related software packages provided engineers with the ability to simulate complex chemical processes. These simulations were the stepping stone for in-depth knowledge of the processes and also a prerequisite for the chemical process optimizations. From then, realistic simulation and optimization were always a primary concern for chemical engineers. To address this concern, they go beyond the one-dimensional design approach toward the two-dimensional design-operation systems, and the design-control interaction of the chemical processes afterward. Moreover, optimizing chemical processes from the aspect of energy and water, separately, gained lots of... 

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... 

The water crisis caused by climate change and anthropogenic activities in Iran has affected the daily lives of the people, and since the agricultural sector has a large share of water consumption, greenhouse cultivation and indoor farming has been developing in this country, to improve water productivity. Considering that the main source of energy supply in greenhouses is fossil fuels, in this work, the possibility of improving Industrial Symbiosis (IS) between greenhouses and waste heat sources in industries by employing the Organic Rankin Cycle (ORC) has been studied, in order to meet the heating demand of greenhouses in a more sustainable and eco-friendly way.Based on that, by modeling... 

Information and Communication Technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can support the transition from traditional practices toward smart supply chain coordination schemes. Such a direction allows for integrating organizational levels of natural gas transportation enterprises, comprising Location, Inventory, and Routing Problem (LIRP) decisions. Specific works have investigated the LIRP of natural gas-to-product and energy networks. However, due to the absence of a systematic ICT-assisted mindset, no study has been oriented from the perspective of the dynamic inventory management and geographic data-driven features of land resources. To handle these challenges, this study partially...