Renewable Energy Global Innovations features: The Role of Scientific Knowledge in the Public’s Perceptions of Energy Technology Risks

Significance Statement

Information is a core component of any problem-solving procedure. Understanding the intricacy and nuances of this information can be instrumental to policy makers in solving pressing issues. Public insights have the power to downplay or encourage any political action. How the public receives and processes scientific data and knowledge is crucial in their decision-making process. Varying levels of knowledge about energy produce varying assessments of risk pertinent to specific energy systems.

This paper seeks to examine the role that perceived and objective scientific knowledge may play in the public’s assessment of risk of different energy technologies and how that affects implementation of energy projects.

Professor Arnold Vedlitz from Texas A&M University and Dr. James Stoutenborough at Idaho State University conducted a study on the role of scientific knowledge in the public’s perceptions of energy technology risks. Their work is now published in the journal, Energy Policy.

At first, they had to determine the role of knowledge in the decision making process. The Knowledge Deficit Model was used to conduct the study. It involved collecting public perceptions on matters related to three distinct energy systems – nuclear meltdown threat, burning of coal, and the threat from wind turbines.

It was noted that experts do not consider the assumption of bounded rationality, which considers that individuals do not operate with perfect information associated with an issue. Incomplete information increases the chances of an individual making mistakes during problem-solving processes, leading to creation of improper strategies. First you have to understand a problem before you can solve it. As the Knowledge Deficit Model suggests, those who understand an issue in the same manner as the experts are more likely to view the associated risks in a manner similar to those experts, therefore making a more rational judgement.

The analyses indicate that there is an important distinction between objective and perceived scientific knowledge. Specifically, despite experts holding risk perceptions that differ substantially across the three energy systems, those who were objectively measured to be more knowledgeable about energy were more likely to perceive risk in a manner congruent with the experts. In other words, those who were truly knowledgeable were able to formulate a nuanced understanding of the risk associated with each system, illustrating the flexibility of objective measures of knowledge that are not related to the underlying risk issues examined.

Meanwhile, the authors found that those who believed they understood energy production (both in general and specific to that energy system) were overwhelmingly more likely to perceive higher levels of risk associated with all three energy systems, regardless of the experts’ positions on these systems. These results are important for two reasons. One, it indicates that when people are overconfident in their understanding of an issue, they are more likely to believe the risk associated with that issue is higher. Two, these results suggest that measures of perceived knowledge are not adequate for evaluating an individual’s understanding of an issue. This is important because measures of perceived knowledge are frequently employed to determine issue-specific knowledge. However, this “knowledge” does not result in decision-making that is consistent with an expert’s understanding of the issue. In short, this perceived knowledge will lead to policy prescriptions that may be ineffective.

The authors observed that differences in predictive influence of perceived and assessed knowledge were likely due to the media’s oversimplification of scientific information. Finding a balance between oversimplification and basic scientific literacy is necessary before the public will be able to offer an informed policy decision.

The study concluded that scientific insight does temper public risk evaluations of various energy systems, therefore showing more vividly the connection between science knowledge, scientific trust, and issue problem identification that directly influence the perceived judgement on any energy projects.

About The Author

Dr. Vedlitz is recognized as an expert for his work at the intersection of science-technology and public policy, seeking to understand the processes through which scientific and technical data and discoveries are understood and acted on by decision makers and the public. He examines the role of information; risk assessments; and social, political, economic, and cultural cues in the framing of science discoveries and innovations; the benefits and risks they expose; and the ways in which this information is received and evaluated by policy makers and the public to make public policies, form regulatory regimes and allocate financial resources. He currently focuses on policy formation and decision making for emerging science and technology and the water-energy-food nexus.

Dr. Vedlitz has published in top public policy journals and has published over 120 articles in the field of politics and science and technology policy. He is a co-author and co-editor of a highly cited book from MIT Press dealing with natural resources management and decision making and author of an important book on public policy. He has been principal investigator, co-principal investigator, and senior research scientist on externally funded research projects totaling more than $15.9 million. He serves as a co-director and member of the advisory board of the NIEHS-funded Center for Translational Environmental Health Research as well as division head for the technology and policy division of the Texas Engineering Experiment Station and for the technology and policy division of the Texas Transportation Institute, both part of the Texas A&M University System.

He is the recipient of several awards including the Herbert Kaufman Award from the American Political Science Association for the Best Paper (2014) in Public Administration and the Texas A&M University Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching (1980). Dr. Vedlitz received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Houston (1975) and his master’s (1970) and bachelor’s degrees (1968) in Government from Louisiana State University.

About The Author

Dr. Stoutenborough’s research and teaching interests included public policy, U.S. state politics, public opinion, and political psychology with a substantive interest in science and technology issues like climate change and renewable energy.

His research can be found in both the institutional and behavioral paradigms, which he seeking to integrate more strongly. From an institutional perspective, Dr. Stoutenborough examines why institutions (normally, U.S. states) reach particular policy decisions. Within the behavioral paradigm, he is currently researching individual-level behavior as it pertains to political attitude formation, problem identification, agenda setting, and policy adoption.

Specifically, his research examines how risk perceptions, knowledge, trust, and various attitudes influence aspects of the policy process. Dr. Stoutenborough has published his research in Governance, Energy Policy, Water Policy, Climatic Change, Energy¸ Journal of Public Policy, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and Review of Policy Research, and in other academic journals.

Dr. Stoutenborough received his Ph.D. (2010) and his M.A. (2005) in Political Science from the University of Kansas (2010) and his B.S. (2003) in Political Science from Kansas State University. He is also a Senior Research Fellow for the Institute for Science, Technology and Public Policy in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.

Reference

James W. Stoutenborough¹, Arnold Vedlitz². The role of scientific knowledge in the public’s perceptions of energy technology risks. Energy Policy volume 96 (2016) page 206–216.

Show Affiliations

1. Department of Political Science, Idaho State University, 302 Gravely Hall, Pocatello, ID 83209, USA
2. Institute for Science, Technology and Public Policy, The Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, 4350 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4350, USA

 

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Renewable Energy Global Innovations features: Effects of Geographic Area, Feedstock, Temperature, and Operating Time on Microbial Communities of Six Full-Scale Biogas Plants

Significance Statement

Organic waste can be converted to energy by making use of a process known as anaerobic digestion, which involves the breaking down of biodegradable materials by microorganisms in the absence of oxygen. They produce a rich quantity of methane which can be used for cooking, transportation and generation of electricity.

The conversion process, which could be either in mesophilic or thermophilic conditions depending on temperature, contains some certain predominant microbiomes. Therefore, it is important to understand the major phylotypes of Bacteria and Archaea in view of increasing the efficiency of the conversion process.

It is also important to note that different feeds and environmental factors should be considered as major influences of composition and physicochemical properties of the slurry, and their effects during the anaerobic digestion process shouldn’t be undermined.

A group of researchers led by Fabrizio Cappa from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Italy investigated the effects of different animal feeds at two separate regions and cheese production areas of Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano on the microbiome of six-full scale biogas plants by using indexed Illumina sequencing to identify key phylotypes of Bacteria and Archaea, and a quantitative polymerase chain reaction to determine 16S rRNA gene of total bacteria, archaea, Clostridiales and methanogens populations. The work was published in the journal Bioresource Technology.

The authors observed the effects of feedstock on the production efficiency of methane during the anaerobic digestion process. In Grana Padano biogas plants, the feedstock containing cattle slurry manure, energy crops and agro-industrial by-products had the highest methane concentration with minute accumulation of volatile fatty acids and ammonium concentration.

Biogas plants of the two regions with feedstock containing only cattle slurry manure had the lowest value of specific methane production and volatile solid degradation efficiency. Coupled with the feedstock composition, they also indicated the effects of the hydraulic retention time, organic loading rate and mixing ratio of the substrate as they played a major role in degradation efficiency of volatile solid and specific methane production yield.

Results from the Illumina sequencing analysis while regarding bacterial communities showed that the geographical area, operating temperature and feedstock played a major role in determining of the plant microbiomes while time had a negligible effect. The most predominant phylotypes were discovered to be: Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria. Thermotogae phylum found only in the thermophilic biogas plant was clearly related to the hydraulic retention time.

When observing the 16S rRNA gene population of bacteria and Clostridiales, results from the real-time polymerase chain reaction indicated a slight difference between both biogas plants of the two separate regions and as a result, the effect of the geographical location area on bacterial diversity has nothing to do with the order of Clostridiales.

For that of the archaeal community, Illumina sequencing analysis indicated most predominant phylotypes to be Methanosarcina and Methanosaeta in mesophilic biogas plants while Methanoculleus was predominant in thermophilic biogas plant. The Methanosarcina was related to ammonium concentration in the biogas plant.

The mean 16S rRNA gene populations of archaea and methanogens indicated major difference in the archaeal population unlike that of the methanogens where no major difference was found.

This study provided important data on the effects of the geographical location area, feedstock and temperature on anaerobic digestion of organic waste in relation to microbiomes involved in the process.

About The Author

Alessandra Fontana completed Masters in Industrial Biotechnology at the University of Turin, Italy, in 2014. She is currently a PhD student at the Doctoral School on the Agro-Food System at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (UCSC), Italy. Her research is mainly focused on recovery of dairy industry wastes for bioenergy production.

At present, she is also working as guest PhD student within the Bioenergy group at the DTU Environment Department (Technical University of Denmark), in a project involving the biogas upgrading by means of hydrogen produced by water electrolysis using excess electricity from wind mills.

About The Author

Vania Patrone is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Microbiology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (UCSC), Italy. Her research is focused on microbial ecology and aims at revealing the identity and physiology of microorganisms within selected environmental or medically relevant systems.
Specifically, her interests include the characterization of gut bacteria and archaea populations to decipher the connection between gut microbial community structure and the onset and progression of disease in both humans and livestock.

A second core research theme is represented by the study of food microorganisms, in particular those related to improving the food quality through fermentation processes, as well as those causing food spoilage. Her areas of expertise range from traditional culture-based microbiological analysis techniques to bio-molecular tools, including genotyping, gene expression, real-time PCR and metagenomics. Since 2016 she coordinates the activities in the microbiome research area of the Research Centre in Nutrigenomics and Proteomics at UCSC.

About The Author

Mirco Garuti completed Masters in Molecular and Industrial Biotechnology at the University of Bologna, Italy, in 2009. He then worked at the Microbial Biotechnology laboratory of Insubria University (Varese, Italy) to optimize fermentation processes aimed at the production of secondary metabolites in Streptomyces strains within a project funding by a private pharmaceutical company.

He is currently working as researcher at the Research Center on Animal Production (CRPA), Italy, focusing on full-scale biogas production improvements, pretreatment technologies, trace elements effects on anaerobic microbial communities, and valorization of agro-industrial by-products in biorefineries. At present, he is also attending a specialization course about Circular Bio-economy.

About The Author

Fabrizio Cappa completed Masters in Agricultural Sciences in 1988. He is a senior researcher at the Institute of Microbiology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (UCSC), Italy. His research is focused on food microbiology and dairy industry technologies. He is currently working on the role of clostridia in anaerobic digestion processes by means of both traditional culture-based microbiological analyses and molecular techniques. He is also focusing on the recovery of dairy industry wastes for bioenergy production.

Reference

Fontana, A.¹, Patrone, V.¹, Puglisi, E.¹, Morelli, L.¹, Bassi, D.², Garuti, M.³, Rossi, L.³, Cappa, F.^1,2  Effects of Geographic Area, Feedstock, Temperature and Operating Time on Microbial Communities Of Six Full-Scale Biogas Plants, Bioresource Technology 218 (2016) 980–990.

Show Affiliations

1. Istituto di Microbiologia, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Via Emilia Parmense, 84, 29122 Piacenza, Italy
2. Centro Ricerche Biotecnologiche, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Via Milano, 24, 26100 Cremona, Italy
3. Centro Ricerche Produzioni Animali, C.R.P.A. S.p.A., Viale Timavo, 43/2, 42121 Reggio Emilia, Italy

 

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Renewable Energy Global Innovations features: Electrochemical behavior of hybrid carbon nanomaterials: the chemistry behind electrochemistry

Significance Statement

Synthesis of hybrid carbon nanomaterials synthesized by temperature-induced opening of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) has yielded three types of multi-walled carbon nanotubes and graphene oxide nanoribbons (GONRs) hybrids. Graphene oxide nanoribbons are basically unzipped multi-walled carbon nanotubes. The main synthesis challenge is the production temperature, which is a critical parameter for the oxygen functional group formation, and determines their electronic structure and their electrochemical performance.

Researcher teams led by Professor Alberto Escarpa from University of Alcala and Professor M. Teresa Martínez at Instituto de Carboquimica ICB-CSIC in Spain proposed to investigate the electrochemical behavior of hybrid carbon nanomaterial production. Their aim was to control the chemistry involved in the production process of nanomaterials, thereby improving the electrochemical performance, which could lead to advanced materials for specific molecular detection. Their work is now published in the peer-reviewed journal Electrochimica Acta

At first, the research team synthesized carbon hybrid nanomaterials by unzipping commercially available MWCNTs at three different temperatures 55 °C, 65 °C and 75 °C, yielding three graphene nanohybrids.

The synthesized carbon nanomaterials were fully characterized by different techniques, such as XRD, Raman, FTIR, XPS and TEM to establish the structural differences according to the different processing temperatures. It was determined that the oxidation degree increases with the production temperature.

Then, electrochemical and impedance measurements were conducted for a wide range of target molecules, at standard temperature, on an electrochemical workplace using a tri-electrode system with a platinum wire, silver-silver chloride and a glassy carbon electrodes.

The team concluded that by controlling chemical oxidation of multi-walled carbon nanotubes, which generates graphene oxide nanoribbons, new gates are opened leading to exploitation of carbon nanomaterials, as novel materials for both electrochemical sensing and biosensing of relevant target molecules. GONR at 65º C yielded promising revelations by containing specific moieties of suitable electrochemical features, which display amazing analytical performance in electrochemical sensing of varying structure chemical molecules. According to the structural analysis, the electrochemical behavior seems to be associated to the progress of the unzipping reaction that influences the balance between the Csp2/Csp3 ratio, the graphitic fraction and the type of functional groups introduced.

These results exhibit the importance of temperature in the production process, for tailoring a carbon nanomaterial that could be utilized in a specific molecular detection application shedding light into new possibilities for electrochemical sensing applications. It also guides the process to the production of advanced materials to be utilized in a specific molecular detection application.

There is a requirement for advanced renewable energy source technologies in order to meet the long term energy demand challenge and protect the environmental balance. Carbon nanomaterials have great potential to advance renewable energy and supercapacitor technologies. One example is employing and modifying carbon nanotubes as electrodes to increase power production in microbial fuel cells because of their high conductivity and large surface area. This provides an opportunity for the participation of carbon nanomaterials, especially in biofuel cells. Moreover, major breakthrough contributed by carbon nanomaterials in the solar energy sector lies in their application in photovoltaic devices. The new tools and improved synthesis of graphene oxide nanoribbons generated in this study provide an excellent nanomaterial to be used as hole or electron transfer layer in solar cells.

About The Author

Aida Martín is a postdoctoral researcher in Nanoengineering and Biology departments at University of California, San Diego, USA since 2016. Her research interests devotes to wearable sensing and biosensing, microfluidics, micro/nanomachines and electrochemical techniques for bacteria sensing in Pr. J. Wang and Pr. J. Hasty’s groups, respectively. She received his PhD. from the University of Alcala, Spain in 2016 where she worked with graphene and carbon nanomaterials for electroanalysis and using microfluidic techniques under the supervisión of Pr. A. Escarpa. She was also a visitor scholar at University of California San Diego in 2014-2015 where she was immersed into micro and nanomachine technologies.

She is co/author of 20 international papers, one international patent in disposable electrodes based on conducting nanomaterials and one book chapter in carbon nanomaterials for microfluidics.

About The Author

Dr. Alberto Escarpa is Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Alcalá since 2003. He has received several awards such the prestigious NATO post-doctoral Scholarship as postdoc researcher at the New Mexico State University (USA) in 2001 or the “Young Investigator Award” by the University of Alcala in 2003. He is the leader and founder of the group “Analytical Miniaturization and Nanotechnology” since 2003. His research activity is focused on microfluidics, biosensing, nanomaterials and micro motors.

He has co-authored more than 110 peer-reviewed articles in international journals, yielding an h-index of 33, is the editor of the book “Miniaturization of analytical systems: principles, designs and applications” (Wiley, 2009) and “Food Electroanalysis” (2015, Wiley). He has given more than 20 invited talks in highly international meetings about microfluidics and miniaturization of analytical chemistry. He is also Associate Editor of RSC Advances and Electrophoresis and member of the Editorial board of Electrophoresis, Food Chemistry, Applied Materials Today and Microchimica Acta. He is also member of Royal Society of Chemistry since 2016.

About The Author

Alejandro Ansón Casaos was born in Zaragoza in 1978. He obtained his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Zaragoza in June 2005 and is a Research Scientist at Instituto de Carboquimica ICB-CSIC since August 2012. His current research includes fundamentals and applications of carbon nanomaterials, mainly carbon nanotubes and graphene oxide, and their colloids. Most specifically, he is interested in the study of physicochemical properties that are relevant for applications in photocatalysis, photovoltaics, energy storage, sensors, and polymer composites. He likes music, chess, pelota, fitness activities, playing the saxophone, and reading essays, biographies and classical novels.

About The Author

María del Carmen Marín was born in Quesada, in the south of Spain, and studied Chemistry at the University of Jaén. Afterwards, she moved to the University of Alcalá (Madrid) and completing her Master in Characterization of Chemical Systems in 2015. Her research in the group of Prof. Escarpa, involving the development of new materials modified with hybrid nanomaterials. Her results revelated the important of the temperature in the synthesis process. This opened the new opportunities for the electrochemical sensing and biosensing applications.

She is now a PhD student at the University of Siena (Italy) in the group of Prof. Olivucci. The investigation line is the developing a prototype protocol for the automatic and faster construction of congruous sets of QM/MM models of rhodopsin-like photoreceptors and of their mutants. The main application is the prediction of the vertical excitation energies for different set of rhodopsins. This project gave her the opportunity to collaborate with the Laboratory for Computational Photochemistry and Photobiology at the Bowling Green State University (EEUU) in 2016.

About The Author

M. Teresa Martinez graduated in Chemistry (1976) and Chemical Engineering (1978) and received her PhD degree in the field of Chemistry from Zaragoza University in 1982. Currently she is Research Professor at the Institute of Carbon- Chemistry (CSIC) where she previously worked as CSIC Research Fellow and Senior Research Scientist. For the period 2002 to 2006 she became the director of the Institute of Carbon-Chemistry and from 1995 to 2014 she has led the group of Carbon Nanotubes and Nanotechnology. She has worked as visiting Professor in International Research Institutions ; 1989 Clausthal-Zellerfeld University (Germany), 1995 University of Sussex (UK), 2006-2007 Molecular Foundry (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory USA), 2008 Electrical Engineering and Computer Science California University at Berkeley(USA) and University of Santiago de Chile ( 2010).

Concerning specific and inter-personal competencies, she was a member of the European Coal and Steel Experts Committee for “Coal Conversion Area” (2000-2002) and co-chairman of the “Strategic Research Area” of the Hydrogen Platform for the VI Framework Programme 2004). At National level she has been a member of the Research and Development Advisory Committee of the Regional Government for the period 2004-2014 and a member of the CSIC Chemical Science and Technologies Area during the years 2001-2006.

Prof. Martinez has developed her research career in a multidisciplinary sphere in the field of material science, energy and environment and for the last 20 years she has approached these fields from the Nanotechnology developing nanomaterials for Energy, Enviromental and Biotechnological applications. Prof. Martinez research is focused on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, her expertise is the development of materials (synthesis, functionalization and processing of hybrid and compounds materials) based on carbon nanostructures; carbon nanotubes, graphene and graphene quantum dots. The starting point was the pioneering work on the single walled carbon nanotubes production by CO2 Laser (1998) later complemented by CVD and arc-discharge techniques. Today Prof. Martinez and her group (Carbon Nanostructures and Nanotechnology founded in 1995) develop innovative and high quality research at the forefront of science combining physics, chemistry and engineering approaches fostering interdisciplinary research. She is so far, the co-author of over than 200 peer-reviewed publications and hundreds of communications to International Congress in these fields.

About The Author

Dra. María Moreno Guzmán received her degree in Chemistry from the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) in 2008 and her PhD in Chemistry from the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) in 2013. The project was aimed to develop new miniaturized systems for multiplexed detection using functionalized artificial micro/nanosensors modified with different receptors. The research line focused on the development of artificial nano- and microsensors for analytical and environmental applications.

In 2015 she was moved with the prestigious group MINYNANOTECH (Analytical miniaturization and nanotechnology), under the mentorship of Dr. Escarpa at University of Alcalá, which allowed her to investigate a pioneer and new nanomotors research line with promising applications in the biomedical and analytical fields. Since then, she has participated in more than 7 research projects. She has co-authored over 17 scientific articles in international journals, written 1 book chapter and 21 international communications in national and international conferences. She has an H-index of 8.

She has both theoretical and practical expertise in nanomaterials microfabrication and characterization techniques. She has seven years of experience in developing pioneering methods for the determination of emerging contaminants in environmen and food.

About The Author

Tania Sierra Gómez was born in Madrid, Spain. She studied Chemistry at the University of Alcalá (Madrid). After she completing her Master in Science Research in the specialty of Chemistry in 2016. Her research in the group of Prof. Escarpa, involving the exploration of different nanomaterials and their possible application for electrochemical sensing and biosensing.

She is now a PhD student at the University of Alcalá (Madrid) in the group of Prof. Escarpa. The investigation line is the developing protocol for the determination quickly and a low cost of biomarkers based on glycoproteins for application in diagnosis and evolution of the cancer.

Reference

María Moreno-Guzman¹, Aída Martín¹, María del Carmen Marín¹, Tania Sierra¹, Alejandro Ansón-Casaos², María Teresa Martínez², Alberto Escarpa¹. Electrochemical behavior of hybrid carbon nanomaterials: the chemistry behind electrochemistry Electrochimica Acta volume 214 (2016) pages 286–294.

Show Affiliations

1. Department of Analytical Chemistry, Physical Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Alcala, E-28871, Alcalá de Henares, Spain
2. Instituto de Carboquímica ICB-CSIC, Miguel Luesma Castán, 4, E-50018, Zaragoza, Spain

 

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Renewable Energy Global Innovations features: Climate change impacts in the energy supply of the Brazilian hydrodominant power system

Significance Statement

Renewable energy is a perfect alternative to fossil fuels and is helping many nations curtail their dependence on oil supply and attain an environmentally friendly space. Therefore, new investments in renewable energy such as solar, wind and biomass are helpful in meeting electricity demands and in minimizing the threats of global warming.

Climate change effects have been found to have a direct impact on renewables, which finally affects their electricity generation. For instance, hydroelectricity generation highly depends on water inflow, which is responsible for turning the hydro-turbines. In addition, the amount of water inflow counts on the amount of precipitation, a climate variable that is normally presented in rainfall-runoff models. Precipitation analyses in different places show contrasting rainfall characteristics as compared with historical data, and this is expected to intensify in days to come.

It therefore becomes important to account for different climatic scenarios in the analyses of renewable energy when designing efficient power systems. In a recent work published in Renewable Energy Professor Anderson Rodrigo de Queiroz and colleagues reported considerable advances in the investigation of climate change and climate scenario effects on water inflow generated by the regional Eta climate model. An optimization model is implemented when making a decision in the event of a hydro-thermal scheduling problem. Their work indicates that climate change can affect the system assured energy and the system’s capacity to supply load. The assured energy represents the amount of energy that a set of power plants can generate at a risk of 5% of deficit.

The authors considered two configurations of the Brazilian Power Generation System for their analysis. One was the existing generation system representing the current condition of the Brazilian Interconnected power system while the second was the future generation system, which represented the planned configuration. The proposed future generation system had ten sub-systems with two fictitious interconnection nodes.

The team implemented results from climate models to represent natural processes as well as their interactions in the atmosphere, and physical features. They used information from models, which accounts for characteristics of elements such as aerosols, snow, clouds, and solar radiation, to first simulate present climatic conditions before future projections.

The authors implemented the large basin rainfall-runoff hydrological model to evaluate rainfall-runoff functions for every river basin of the selected system. The model included selected soil and vegetation attributes of each region represented, and is composed of mathematical relations of soil water balance, surface and subsurface drainage as well as interception.

The researchers realized that the system assured energy was bigger for the first period taking into account the four members of the climate model. This was a concern considering that all the existing plants will most likely produce less electricity in days to come. From the results of the future generation system, the study indicated a similar decrease in electricity generation implying that with the proposed hydro power plant expansion, the effects of climate change will take the overall generation to approximately 28% less than the projected hydro-power production using the historical series. In fact, they recorded a drop of about 15% and 28% for existing generation system and future generation system respectively.

An increase in other water uses was also found to significantly affect the system’s assured energy. Increased domestic and industrial water demands would lead to reduced water inflows in the hydro plants, and consequently lead to reduced power generation.

In this paper, the authors provided a framework and performed an investigation implementing a combination of climatic projections scaled at regional levels, a generation optimizer and a rainfall-runoff model. This was in a bid to evaluate the effects of climate change in hydro power generation.

About The Author

Dr. Anderson Rodrigo de Queiroz is a research assistant professor in the CCEE department at North Carolina State University (NCSU). He is member of the computing and systems group and the Operations Research (OR) program at NCSU. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering, major in Power Systems, both from Federal University at Itajubá (UNIFEI), in Brazil, in 2005 and 2007, respectively. He has a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, in 2011. Prior to joining NCSU he worked as a consultant / researcher in several projects for the industry and utilities. From 2013 to 2015 he was an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UNIFEI.

His research interests include operations research where his focus is on large-scale stochastic optimization, analytics and decision-making techniques with applications to planning and operation, economics and design of electrical and energy systems and climate-water-energy nexus.

About The Author

Dr. Luana Medeiros Marangon Lima is an analytical consultant at MC&E. She received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering both from Federal University at Itajubá (UNIFEI), in Brazil, in 2005 and 2007, respectively. She has a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, in 2011. She worked as a consultant in several projects applying OR techniques to solve energy related problems. From 2013 to 2016 she was an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UNIFEI.

Her research interests include application of statistical methods to quantify and deal with uncertainty in data and the use of forecasts in decision-making models such as power generation planning and operation. She also has experience with transmission and distribution network regulation and pricing procedures in the new Smart Grid environment.

About The Author

Dr. José Wanderley Marangon Lima is a senior consultant at MC&E and a voluntary professor at Federal University at Itajubá (UNIFEI), Brazil. He has a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from IME/RJ (1979), B.SC. in Business Administration from UFRJ/RJ (1980), a D.Sc degree in Electrical Engineering from UFRJ/RJ (1994).

He is a Senior Member of IEEE and Cigré. From 1980 to 1993, he was with Eletrobrás as senior engineer working on Power System operations and planning. He was with UNIFEI as a Professor of Electrical Engineering (1993-2015). He did his sabbatical at University of Texas at Austin in the Operations Research Department (2005-2006). He was with the Brazilian Electricity Regulatory Agency (ANEEL) as an advisor to director (1998-1999). He was the coordinator of the Price and Tariff Technical Committee at Ministry of Mines and Energy (2001-2002). In 2003, he was also with the Ministry of Mines and Energy and elaborated the New Brazilian Electricity Model. He is author and co-author of more than 150 papers published in journals and seminars about Energy, Regulation and Power Systems Operation and Planning. He has been a consultant for more than 20 companies and utilities.

About The Author

Dr. Benedito Cláudio da Silva is a assistant professor in the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) of Federal University of Itajubá (UNIFEI), in Brazil. He is member of the Energy and Water Resources Group of NRI. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Mechanical Engineering, both from UNIFEI, in 1996 and 2000, respectively. He has a D.Sc. Degree in Water Resources from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil, in 2011. Prior to joining as assistant professor at UNIFEI he worked as a consultant / researcher in several projects. His research interests include Hydrological modeling, inflow forecasting, urban drainage, hydrological and meteorological integration, climate change, hydrometry, water resources management and hydropower plants.

About The Author

M.Sc. Luciana Alvim Scianni received her BSc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) in 1993 and MSc in Electrical Engineering from Universidade Federal de Itajubá (UNIFEI) in 2014, with thesis on the Climate Change Impacts on Power Generation in Brazil.
With more than 15 years of experience on project management, she worked as senior Project Manager at SMS Demag LTDA between 2000 and 2006. At VALE, from 2006 to 2008, worked with prospection plans to install Steel Making Plants in Brazil. After that, she worked as the Market Intelligence Manager at Vale Soluções em Energia – VSE, from 2008 until 2010. Since 2010, she´s been working as a consultant at MC&E on projects in Power System economics and regulation.

References

Anderson Rodrigo de Queiroz¹, Luana M. Marangon Lima², Jose W. Marangon Lima³, Benedito C. da Silva⁴, and Luciana A. Scianni³. Climate change impacts in the energy supply of the Brazilian hydrodominant power system. Renewable Energy, volume 99 (2016), pages 379-389.

Show Affiliations

1. CCEE Department at North Carolina State University, 2501 Stinson Dr., 27607, Raleigh, NC, USA
2. Institute of Electrical and Energy Systems at the Federal University of Itajubá, BPS Av., 1303, 37500-903, Itajubá, MG, Brazil
3. MC&E Research, R. Sebastião Pereira Leite, 48, 37500-099, Itajubá, MG, Brazil
4. Institute of Natural Resources at the Federal University of Itajubá, BPS Av., 1303, 37500-903, Itajubá, MG, Brazil

 

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Renewable Energy Global Innovations features: Recycling Electroplating Sludge to Produce Sustainable Electrocatalysts for the Efficient Conversion of Carbon Dioxide in a Microbial Electrolysis Cell

Significance Statement

One of the promising ways involves the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide into useful gases in the presence of a suitable catalyst mostly metal. However, there exist certain limitations to the excessive use or this technique due to the need for a catalyst to function at high overpotential and the growing price of metals.

The use of a disposed electroplating sludge which comprises of certain organic compounds and metals as electrocatalysts has shown huge potential in electrolytic reaction. The successful use of the electroplating sludge could actually be cost-effective.

A microbial electrolysis cell is often classified as a potential source for renewable energy applications, as they have the ability to convert organic compounds into energy. The microbial electrolysis cell which also adapts a proton exchange membrane also has the ability to reduce high overpotential during electrochemical process. Hence, a means of using electroplating sludge in a microbial electrolysis cell could definitely achieve some positive results.

In a recent paper published in Electrochimica Acta, Professor Yong Yuan at Guangdong Institute of Eco-Environmental and Soil Sciences and Professor Haoran Yuan and Lifang Deng and their colleagues at Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in China investigated the feasibility and efficiency of a thermally treated electroplating sludge as electrocatalysts for reduction of carbon dioxide to wanted products while considering a microbial electrolysis cell.

At first, the authors confirmed the presence of certain metallic compounds responsible for initiating carbon dioxide reduction when analyzing the thermally treated electroplating sludge.

The thermally treated electroplating sludge possessed high positive potential for carbon reduction compared to the previously reported ones. They also revealed a high catalytic activity during the conversion process.

At a certain potential, the thermally treated electroplating sludge performed efficient reduction of carbon dioxide in the microbial electrolysis cell as six main products; methane, ethylene, carbon monoxide, hydrogen and acetate were produced while methane had the highest production rate.

The thermally treated electroplating sludge when compared with the thermally treated municipal sludge and thermally dyeing sludge possessed the highest current densities and Faraday efficiencies for the converted products. The thermally treated electroplating sludge showed excellent stability in the microbial electrolysis cell during the conversion process of carbon dioxide.

The authors also provided a possible pathway mechanism for reduction of carbon dioxide with the use of the thermally treated electroplating sludge catalyst. They found that carbon dioxide was first reduced to a carbonate ion before being protonated by bicarbonate ions to produce methane, ethylene, carbon dioxide and acetate.

This study developed successfully a platform where electroplating sludge can be recycled as a useful catalyst for conversion of carbon dioxide into wanting gases.

About The Author

Li-Fang Deng completed her Master’s studies at Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2009. She worked as a research assistant at Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences (2011 to present). She has authored over 20 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Her scientific interests include development of wastewater treatment, application of microbial biotechnologies and development of electrochemical catalysts.

About The Author

Hao-Ran Yuan is currently a Professor of Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He received Ph.D. in Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences (2010). He has published around 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals. His research interests include clean utilization of combustible solid waste, utilization and low carbon emission of high value organic waste, development of electrochemical catalysts and the transformation of coal fired boiler.

About The Author

Prof. Yong Yuan is a Distinguished Professor of school of Environmental Science and Technology at Guangdong University of Technology (2017-present). He received Ph.D. in Environmental Biotechnology from Konkuk University in South Korea (2005-2009). He worked as a Professor at Guangdong Institute of Eco-environmental Science and Technology from 2009 to 2017. He has authored over 80 articles in peer-reviewed journals. His research interests include development of microbial energy harvesting systems, application of microbial biotechnologies and development of electrochemical catalysts.

Reference

Yuan, H.^1,3,4, Deng, L.^1,3,4, Cai, X.², Zheng, T.^1,3,4,5, Zhou, S.², Chen, Y.¹, Yuan, Y.² Recycling Electroplating Sludge to Produce Sustainable Electrocatalysts for the Efficient Conversion of Carbon Dioxide in a Microbial Electrolysis Cell,  Electrochimica Acta 222 (2016) 177–184.

Show Affiliations

1. Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China
2. Guangdong Key Laboratory of Agricultural Environment Pollution Integrated Control, Guangdong Institute of Eco-Environmental and Soil Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, China
3. Key Laboratory of Renewable Energy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China
4. Guangdong Key Laboratory of New and Renewable Energy Research and Development, Guangzhou 510640, China
5. Green Biomanufacturing Research Institute, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, 212003, China

 

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Renewable Energy Global Innovations features: Unintentional bulk doping of polymer-fullerene blends from a thin interfacial layer of molybdenum trioxide (MoO3)

Significance Statement

High work-function metal oxides, such as molybdenum trioxide (MoO₃), have been used to improve charge extraction properties of the contacts and reduce surface recombination (i.e. extraction of the wrong carrier type) in organic photovoltaics based on low mobility materials such as polymer fullerene blends. However, research pioneered by Professor Ronald Österbacka and colleagues from the Åbo Akademi University in Finland showed that MoO₃ molecules can diffuse from a thin interfacial layer at the anode through the whole active layer causing unintentional doping. The doping action contributed by MoO₃ results in the formation of a depletion region and a neutral (field free) region in the active layer. This doping effects present dire consequences in the whole device performance, since only charges generated in the depletion region contribute to the current. Their work is now published in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Material Energy.

In order to investigate the doping process caused by the metal oxide, the researchers had to conduct capacitance-voltage measurements. Using Mott-Schotty analysis, the research team was able to demonstrate that the doping-induced capacitive regime Charge Extraction by a Linearly Increasing Voltage (doping-CELIV) technique could be applied in determining the doping concentrations and built-in potentials in sandwich-type diode structures. This was possible since the depletion region width was smaller than the thickness of the device.

Devices without the molybdenum trioxide showed a flat response in the transients that were normalized to the displacement current from the charging of the geometrical capacitance. This indicated very low doping concentrations since here the molybdenum trioxide had been replaced by another compound. A parallel experiment was also being conducted that included the use of the molybdenum trioxide interlayer which showed drastic increase in current response due to its doping effect. It was now clear that the doping was caused by diffusion of MoO₃ molecules from the contacts to the active layer.

The team also carried out Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) measurements on polymer-fullerene films in order to test whether the origin of the fixed space charge was the molybdenum trioxide that constantly diffused into the active layer. They observed that molybdenum was present on the surface of the film and had migrated through the whole active layer.

This paper shows that the unintentional bulk doping in diodes and solar cells is caused by molybdenum trioxide that diffuses from the thin interfacial layer past the whole active layer. Such extent of doping is extremely detrimental for any device performance.

Reference

M. Nyman, S. Dahlström, O. J. Sandberg, R. Österbacka. Unintentional Bulk Doping of Polymer-Fullerene Blends from a Thin Interfacial Layer of MoO₃. Adv. Energy Mater. 2016, 6, 1600670.

Physics/Faculty of Science and Engineering and Center for Functional Materials, Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.

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