Vol. 3 No. 1 (2025): Advanced Technologies in Smart and Sustainable Energy for Carbon Neutrality Transformations

Article

• Open Access

  Article ID: 330

  

  Sustainable integration of photovoltaic systems in different climatic conditions—A financial and environmental assessment

  by H. M. Teamah, M. Teamah

  Clean Energy Science and Technology, Vol.3, No.1, 2025;
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  DOI: https://doi.org/10.18686/cest330

  The current paper investigates a 6 MW grid-connected photovoltaic system model in two different countries: Canada and Egypt. The analysis was conducted in the frame of a sustainable development feasibility assessment. The two countries were chosen as they have significantly different irradiation levels. Two cities within each country were considered for comparison. The proposed system is simulated under realistic conditions in RETScreen. The weather conditions were imported from the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) website. The project viability has been assessed using different financial indicators. Amongst them is the payback. Payback of projects located in Egypt is considerably lower than in Canada. The payback in Kharga Oasis in Egypt is 7.3 years. It yields a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 62.7 tons of CO₂. The payback in a low-irradiation city like Victoria in Canada is 13.3 years. The project installed in Victoria mitigates greenhouse gas emissions by 53.2 tons of CO₂. The study also shows the detrimental effect of increasing the initial cost and debt term on the project’s financial viability. The outcome of the study concludes that PV projects are very promising in moderate weather like Egypt. It can be viable in northern countries like Canada but under certain conditions of operation and financing.

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• Open Access

  Article ID: 296

  

  Impact of self-consumption and regulatory approaches on the profitability of a grid-connected PV setup plant for a net-zero-emission villa in Morocco

  by Amin Bennouna

  Clean Energy Science and Technology, Vol.3, No.1, 2025;
  55 Views

  DOI: https://doi.org/10.18686/cest296

  For a bioclimatic villa located in Marrakech, Morocco, electricity and bills were monitored for several years in this study. Energy was aggregated into days and months to be reconciled with monthly bills. Demand-side management, namely shifting electricity consumption to the daytime, improved the investment payback time to acceptable levels. Results are used (i) to analyze financial sensitivity to self-consumption and (ii) to compare the profitability of the actual situation of the villa in self-consumption without redemption of surpluses with other possible regulatory approaches (surplus sales and net-metering).

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• Open Access

  Article ID: 273

  

  Projections of global energy transition models in the wake of industrial revolution and climate change policies

  by Engin Mert, Mehmet Aksu, Melih Soner Celiktas

  Clean Energy Science and Technology, Vol.3, No.1, 2025;
  41 Views

  DOI: https://doi.org/10.18686/cest273

  This study evaluates the potential impacts of Industry 4.0 on energy demand, CO₂ emissions, and climate change up to 2050 and provides an analytical basis for developing climate policies. Using the Low-Emissions Analysis Platform, the paper calculated projected technology diffusions under reference, moderate-adoption, and high-adoption scenarios. The findings reveal that adopting Industry 4.0 can significantly increase electricity demand. To address these challenges, the study recommends that policymakers adopt uniform carbon pricing policies, focus on decarbonizing energy supply and demand, and develop infrastructure for road transportation electrification. Policymakers are also urged to transition to carbon-free electricity generation technologies and implement pricing policies covering all sectors’ emission intensities to reduce total emissions effectively. Finally, the study highlights the importance of conducting holistic evaluations through life-cycle analyses. It suggests future research areas, including regional variations, energy demand shifts between sectors, energy cost evaluation, and conducting life-cycle analyses for electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies.

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• Open Access

  Article ID: 249

  

  Investigation of hygrothermal behavior of a novel bio-based panel: Experiment and numerical simulation

  by Yaping Zhou, Abdelkrim Trabelsi, Li Xiang, Mohamed El Mankibi

  Clean Energy Science and Technology, Vol.3, No.1, 2025;
  102 Views

  DOI: https://doi.org/10.18686/cest249

  Straw composites, owing to their low carbon footprint and favorable hygrothermal properties, are becoming a promising alternative insulation material for buildings in order to promote energy saving and occupants’ comfort. However, the heat and moisture characteristics of straw composites at the material scale and under steady-state condition are insufficient for a thorough assessment of their performance as a building component in actual service conditions. This study focused on the hygrothermal performance of a novel bio-based wall made with a rice straw–alginate composite material. The temperature and relative humidity profiles within the wall were monitored under various boundary conditions. The inverse analysis method was proposed to determine liquid water permeability. In in a dynamic test, compared with the model of coupled heat-and-moisture transfer (CHM), the transient heat transfer model predicted temperature profiles with higher errors and underestimated total heat flux by up to 30.6%. Also, under the dynamic condition, the CHM model with liquid water transport showed decreased mean absolute errors by 61%, 57% and 8% at depths of 28 mm, 36 mm and 64 mm, respectively, compared with those predicted by the CHM model without liquid water transport. Both vapor transport and liquid transport seemed to be essential when modeling thermal transfer and moisture transfer through the wall.

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• Open Access

  Article ID: 334

  

  Optimal control method for flexible loads in thermally activated buildings

  by Xiaochen Yang, Ruizhi Wang, Zhenya Zhang, Ping Wang, Dingzhou Liu, Yixuan Jiang

  Clean Energy Science and Technology, Vol.3, No.1, 2025;
  102 Views

  DOI: https://doi.org/10.18686/cest334

  As the penetration of renewable energy in the energy system continues to rise, the intermittency and stochasticity of energy supply have become increasingly significant, posing challenges to the dynamic coordination between energy supply and demand. Building thermal mass, with its inherent heat capacity, offers substantial energy storage potential, presenting a cost-effective alternative to traditional active energy storage methods. The activation and precise control of flexible energy from the building's thermal mass, has become a critical area of research. In this paper, based on a case floor-type thermally activated building system (TABS), the methods and constraints of simulating the energy flexibility potential on the demand side of the building were analyzed. By developing model predictive control (MPC) strategies, including white-box MPC, grey-box MPC, and black-box MPC, this study compared and assessed the control performance in terms of room temperature, accumulated energy cost, and the utilization efficiency of energy flexibility. Compared with the traditional rule-based control method, the MPCs showed better performance in room-temperature control, operation economics, and efficiency of flexible-load utilization, effectively saving energy costs by up to 20% and improving flexibility utilization by nearly 40%. Moreover, based on the performance comparison of the MPCs, white-box MPC performed optimally in terms of room-temperature control, while grey-box MPC was more effective in reducing energy costs and improving energy flexibility. The findings of this paper can provide theoretical insight for the efficient utilization of energy flexibility from building thermal mass and the selection of control methods.

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• Open Access

  Article ID: 297

  

  Short-term forecasting of building heating load based on MVMD-SSA-LSTM

  by Bo Zhou, Yueyi Zhang, Chaoyang Fei, Xiuming Li, Zhigang Xie, Daohe Li

  Clean Energy Science and Technology, Vol.3, No.1, 2025;
  9 Views

  DOI: https://doi.org/10.18686/cest297

  A short-term heating load forecast for buildings is a critical step in the subsequent control of energy systems, directly impacting system energy consumption. However, given that heating load and its influencing factors constitute volatile time series data, noise interference within the data significantly limits prediction accuracy and stability. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel MVMD-SSA-LSTM model for building heating load forecasts, which integrates Multivariate Variational Mode Decomposition (MVMD), Sparrow Search Algorithm (SSA), and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural networks. Initially, a correlation analysis of the factors influencing building heating load is conducted to identify the key determinants. Subsequently, MVMD is employed to decompose the multidimensional dataset into several modes. A correlation analysis is then performed on these decomposed modes to extract supplementary features, which are combined with the original data to form a new dataset, thereby reducing feature redundancy. Finally, an LSTM neural network is utilized as the core predictive model, with the SSA algorithm optimizing three critical parameters: The maximum training iterations, the number of hidden units, and the initial learning rate. The predicted outputs of each heating load mode are aggregated to obtain the final forecast. Results demonstrate that the MVMD-SSA-LSTM model effectively mitigates the uncertainty in heating load sequence forecasts, overcoming noise disturbances and exhibiting superior performance compared to other commonly used models, with significantly higher accuracy and stability.

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• Open Access

  Article ID: 286

  

  Possibility of the application of Si₅O₁₀–Ge₅O₁₀ for increasing H-adsorption towards the energy storage in transistors rather than Li-ion batteries

  by Fatemeh Mollaamin

  Clean Energy Science and Technology, Vol.3, No.1, 2025;
  69 Views

  DOI: https://doi.org/10.18686/cest286

  A comprehensive investigation on hydrogen grabbing via Si₅O₁₀–Ge₅O₁₀ was carried out including using density functional theory computations. The data showed that when silicon was replaced with germanium, the hydrogen-grabbing energy was ameliorated. The electromagnetic and thermodynamic properties of Si₅O₁₀–Ge₅O₁₀ and Li₂(Si₅O₁₀–Ge₅O₁₀) nanoclusters were evaluated. The fluctuation in charge density values demonstrated that electronic densities were mainly located in the boundary of adsorbate/adsorbent atoms during adsorption. Therefore, it can be concluded that the Si₅O₁₀–Ge₅O₁₀ nanocluster might be an appropriate candidate for hydrogen storage in transistors. Lithium has an advantage over Si/Ge for possessing higher electron-and-hole motion, which allows lithium instruments to operate at higher frequencies than Si/Ge instruments.

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• Open Access

  Article ID: 269

  

  Biogas production using conventional plastic water tank digester

  by Rabiu Ahmad Abubakar

  Clean Energy Science and Technology, Vol.3, No.1, 2025;
  8 Views

  DOI: https://doi.org/10.18686/cest269

  Agricultural biomass is an essential source of clean energy, particularly through technologies like anaerobic fermentation, which is used to produce biogas. This clean energy can replace fossil fuels, helping to reduce dependency on non-renewable resources. This project focuses on the design of a 0.5 m³ fixed dome plastic biogas digester, a manual biogas compressor, and biogas production from domestic biodegradable waste such as dry leaves, kitchen waste, and grass. The experiment involved mixing 120 kg of biodegradable waste with 300 kg of water and feeding it into the digester. Three batch experiments were conducted over three months. The first two months did not yield successful results, but in the third month, the digester produced 1 kg of biogas at an ambient temperature of 34 ℃ to 35 ℃. Negative pressure was observed at the start, indicating some aerobic digestion before anaerobic digestion began. The maximum pressure in the digester reached 7172.75 Pa on day nine, with a gas yield of 0.15 kg on the same day. Combustible gas production started after 20 days, and the gas produced over the next 30 days was compressed into cylinders for mobility. This success highlights the potential of biogas technology to contribute to the energy mix and address current energy challenges. The study also investigates the performance and durability of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) used in biogas digesters over a three-month period, considering long-term environmental exposure. PVC is a widely used thermoplastic polymer, known for its chemical resistance, cost-effectiveness, and strength. These properties make it suitable for small- to medium-scale digesters, particularly under mesophilic conditions (35 ℃–40 ℃). The PVC digester-maintained gas retention and structural integrity without significant degradation during the observation period. However, long-term exposure to UV radiation and thermal fluctuations presents challenges, as PVC degrades under UV exposure, leading to brittleness and cracking. Prolonged exposure to high temperatures may also cause PVC to soften, especially in thermophilic conditions (>50 ℃). Predictions suggest that PVC digesters could last 5–8 years with UV protection and under optimal conditions. Without UV stabilization or in harsh environments, their lifespan may be reduced to 2–4 years. Regular maintenance, temperature management, and UV protection are crucial for extending the durability of PVC-based digesters.

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