Sharif Digital Repository

The gradual exhaustion of oil and gas resources and the various problems involved in their pollution makes it necessary to promote a renewable energy system. One of the most interesting developments of standalone systems based on the utilization of hydrogen is solar hydrogen system. Central and southern Iran exhibit an excellent solar climate which makes them ideal places for solar hydrogen systems. The economy of Iran is based on oil and it has one of the largest reserves of oil and gas in the world but the reserves would not be enough to meet the domestic and export markets starting in three to four decades. Moreover, elimination of energy subsidies in Iran, will led to more tendencies to... 

In this thesis a general model for simulation of solar cooler for domestic usage is developed. The model consists of 2 main parts: thermo-dynamical and economical calculations. The thermodynamic part consists of 4 sub models: a model for calculation of incoming solar radiation, cooling load demand calculation, the refrigeration cycle and the solar cycle with heat storage.As for hourly calculation of system performance part of the model produces the hourly received radiation data based on geographical position and orientation of the receiving surface. Base on results of the cooling load calculation for a 9 m2 studying room located in western part of Tehran, 1 TBR (3.516 kW) is chosen as... 

Focusing on fossil fuel to secure energy demand lead to big challenges. Hydrogen as alternative for fossil fuel has attracted a lot of attentions. Fuel cell with an electrochemical reaction which it’s byproducts are water and heat convert Hydrogen into electricity. High efficiency and low environmental pollution, persuade many researchers toward fuel cell commercialization. But problems such as high cost, high power oscillation and inertia, avoid fuel cell from significant development. One way to deal with these problems is using the fuel cell and battery hybrid system. In recent decade too many research has been made in utilizing this hybrid system in transportation. This project... 

Inappropriate effects of fossil fuels and conventional power generation systems on the environment have necessitated a sustainable energy system for the next decade by growing interests in renewable energy systems. The world’s most fast-growing renewable energy resource is the wind energy. The main problem of wind power is the power fluctuations at the load side caused by the variable nature of wind speed, and the main issue in case of remote locations is the long-term storage of power generated by wind turbines. Batteries can be used to store a limited amount of energy for a short time. Although new advances in this field have been achieved, most common type of batteries is hardly able to... 

Fuel cells are a reliable technology for electrical power generation, widely regarded as a promising alternative for stationary and mobile applications. In order to supply vehicle required power, fuel cell must possess suitable transient response. In this work, a mathematical zero dimensional control-oriented model for a PEM fuel cell stack is developed. Afterwards, to increase the efficiency, four parameters including cathode air inlet flow rate, return manifold cross section area, anode hydrogen inlet flow rate and hydrogen humidity are optimized in different vehicle current demand. Also, in order to decrease water production inside the fuel cell membrane, considered parameters are... 

increasing energy demand and emission of environmental pollutant as a result of using fossil fuels and increase in waste generated due to human activities resulted in considering this source as a partial substitute for fossil resources in power application . Hence in this project biomass is considered as source of energy for heat and power application. Having low quality energy is the most important difficulty for application this resource as an energy carrier, so, gasification is applied to convert this source to gas with higher quality one. Produced gas in gasification enters to a micro turbine to meet thermal and electrical demand of the Sharif energy research institute. To investigate... 

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... 

This current reseach concentrates on designing and evaluation of stand-alone alternative energy system which consists of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell system (PEMFC), a photovoltaic (PV) panel, a proton exchange membrane electrolyser and a hydrogen storage tank.. To establish the minimum capacity of the system components, a system sizing model is developed in MATLAB Based on meteorological and the electrical yearly demand data which are extracted from DEDM model. The accuracy of the sub models is checked by comparing the experimental measurements of the system components obtained from other literatures with model outputs. The evaluation is based on demand profile, investment costs,... 

In many previous Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) models,the catalyst distribution in Catalyst Layer (CL) was assumed to be uniform and there are just a few models which consider variation of catalyst loading across the CL. In this research, a half-cell PEMFC cathode model is applied to investigate the effect of catalyst loading in CL plane under the land and channels of bipolar plates. In addition, the agglomerate model which has been shown to be more complete representation of the fuel cell CL is used. It is necessary to mention, in many previous PEMFC models, the catalyst layer was treated as a pseudohomogenous layer. In both models, the micro structure of CL and its effect... 

Sustainable development is the basic aim of energy researchers. But common conversion technologies with respect to efficiency, fuel type and pollution of them, need basic operating improvement to reach sustainable development. Aim of this project is investigation of high temperature fuel cells as basic energy convertor. To improve performance of fuel cell system, four integration systemsare modeled and proposed. Using integrated systems in combined cooling, heat and power is another way of improving performance of systems, that is done in this project.
To improve system performance, the optimum operating values of these parameters is determined. In order to use four proposed system in... 

Nowadays, the reduction of crude oil quality and the growth of environmental restrictions are the main challenges in oil refineries worldwide. The high demand of lighter refinery products and the shrinking market of the heavy products, highlighted the role of heavy residues conversion technologies.Gasification technology consumes these heavy refinery residues and produces clean syngas. By this way and the integration of gasification with power generation cycles, more value added products such as electrical energy, steam and hydrogen can be provided. For this aim to be achieved, three different scenarios are developed and investigated in this project. The first scenario includes the... 

In recent years, the issue of sustainability in the energy systems has attracted the attention of energy researchers. Using fossil fuels in common energy conversion systems cause environmental pollution, declining reserves of fossil resources and increase their prices because of the scarcity of fossil resources. Therefore, achieving the goals of sustainability necessitate using high efficiency energy conversion technology. Bio-inspired energy systems are one of the main candidates to improve energy conversion systems. The main target of this study is developing an optimal multi-generation energy system model, dynamically. MFC, Septic tank and Algae culture are integrated and produced power,... 

In this thesis the superstructure of continuous monitoring system has been developed to help energy service companies’ network. Suggested superstructure consists of three main sections: data acquisition, data analysis and decision-making, optimizer. Historical data and data which picked up by sensors are imported in decision support tool. Input data are analyzed by technical, economical and environmental models and converted to actionable indicator for best management of the project to promote energy saving project. Because the ESCO income obtained from the energy saving project, development of analytical decision support tool will help ESCO to evaluate the procedure of the project.... 

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 combination of photovoltaic technology and Organic Rankine Cycle reduces the temperature of the solar panel and, on the other hand, generates separate electricity from excess heat. The reason for the use of the Organic Rankine Cycle is the low temperature of the heat source. It is not economical to use other cycles like steam Rankine cycle in low-temperature heat sources. To maximize the plant factor of the Organic Rankine cycle system, especially when there is not enough solar radiation, it is possible to utilize the flue gas heat recovery in office buildings and reduce the cost of electricity generation. In this project, the simulation of this system is carried out for the Energy... 

Increasing global demand for water, food, energy and the interdependency of these three nexuses increase the necessity of finding suitable solutions and making policies considering the impact of each nexus to the others. The aim of developing greenhouses is to produce high-quality food with high performance while the water consumption decrease. This comes along with huge amount of energy consumption. Solar greenhouse technology utilizes solar energy to decrease heating demand of greenhouse to zero. The greenhouse performance has a direct correlation with climate condition. This research has been conducted to present optimal design for solar greenhouses. Firstly, a solar passive design was... 

Fuel cell is a very attractive technology for clean electricity production and has a wide range of applications from industry to transportation and power generation. There are several issues that prevent the development of this technology widely. Rapid degradation of fuel cells during operation is one of them. Online monitoring of operational parameters in order to control and optimize the effective variables of power generation and life of the fuel cell considered as an important way to mitigate fuel cell’s degradation. In this research, a set of models were developed to calculate the voltage, current, corrosion, as well as the fuel cell system state variables instantaneously. Two robust... 

The operating conditions of the battery in renewable energy systems affect its electrochemical behavior and degradation process. Recent research mainly estimates battery lifetime through conventional methods such as counting the number of equivalent battery life cycles or based on simple experimental models that may lead to optimistic predictions in battery service period. In this study, a reduced-order thermoelectrochemical-aging battery model is developed for the application of renewable energy systems and the battery degradation analysis is investigated by this model. The proposed microscopic model evaluates the effect of battery operating conditions such as state of charge, current and... 

Heating demand required for greenhouses is mainly met by fossil fuels. On the other hand, anxieties over usage of fossil fuels have led the societies to move toward renewable energies. With this in mind, the purpose of this research is to analyze using both solar energy for satisfying the heating demand of greenhouses and heat storage for compensating the intermittence of renewable energy.Considering the mentioned points, in the current research, a linear optimization framework has been developed for design and operation of energy systems including long-term heat storage to meet heating demand of greenhouses. The objective of this framework is to minimize annual cost. The developed method... 

Meeting the energy demand of agricultural greenhouses has turned out to be the most important challenge of greenhouse cultivation. In this study, it is proposed to use the concept of industrial symbiosis between agricultural greenhouses and biogas plants to face this challenge. The main purpose of the study is to investigate the potential clean greenhouse area that may be supported by the proposed symbiotic network, in order to provide a decision-making tool for the relevant policymakers. The methodology is based on the agent-based input-output matching economic analysis. The amount of biogas produced by poultry and cattle manure is estimated to be 0.6 (m3 / kg VS) and 0.47 (m3 / kg VS)...