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GCC Energy Security Symposium (Volume 2011, Issue 2)
- Conference date: 12-15 Nov 2011
- Location: Texas A&M University in Qatar, Education City, Al Rayyan, Qatar
- Volume number: 2012
- Published: 01 November 2011
21 - 28 of 28 results
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Revealing the Primary Objectives of Green Construction Standards
More LessAbstractThe built environment has a direct impact on Qatar's natural environment, the economy and human health. Qatar is the largest consumer of energy per capita in the world, the fourth country in the world that produces less water from freshwater resources and so relies essentially on desalination for domestic water supplies.
Qatar Sustainability Assessment System (QSAS) is a performance-based sustainability rating system which aims to create a sustainable urban environment that reduce environmental impacts while satisfying local community needs. In addition to addressing all locally relevant aspects of sustainability, ecological impact, and green building design criteria, QSAS developed a standalone building energy standard to support Qatar's building energy ratings.
Local authorities in Qatar will incorporate QSAS component and framework encouraging all the government buildings to achieve a QSAS rating of 3 stars besides the official incorporation of many QSAS criteria into mandatory Qatar construction standards 2010. Furthermore, a revolution in the field of sustainability assessment is the QSAS sports component; for the first time in the world an assessment system is developed tailored to the rating of all indoor and outdoor sporting venues.
QSAS adopted the EPC CEN standard and EPC approach for the Qatar energy code development and some normative parameters used in CEN standards were changed for the use in the Qatar local environment. It complies with the global trend towards performance-based code; using standardised normative calculation methods. The simplified calculation is preferred as it requires less input data, no deep simulation expertise and leads to transparent readily understandable calculations.
The performance based approach has been shown to lead several cycles; i) innovation which driven by current minimum energy performance at the time; followed by ii) wide market implementation driven by the adoption of the novel technology procedures; followed by more stringent minimum requirements, taking into account the improved cost-benefit ratio of novel energy saving technologies.
QSAS building energy rating standard has three levels of assessment. The building's thermal behaviour, technical systems and primary energy source have all been taken into consideration by these three levels.
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Passive Dynamic Buildings
More LessAbstractIncreasingly, architects and builders want to use passive solutions in their designs. This talk introduces a new, environmentally-responsive, thermal insulation technology that is capable of regulating heat transfer (and therefore cooling) through the walls of a building as a function of the temperature difference between indoor and outdoor environments. This is a passive dynamic technology that can help to reconcile the extreme climate of Qatar, and the other Gulf Region countries, with modern comfort requirements.
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Energy Security
More LessAbstractThe presentation considers key aspects of energy management for future infrastructure systems, and their control, and highlights the impact that strategic carbon capture can have on arid and semi arid environments. Specifically, the paper consider extending current research on biofuels to the use of grass, shrubs and industrial waste products, as a means of carbon capture, with potential solutions for the waste products viz. subsequent use as fuels and encouraging revegetation as a consequence of using waste as nutrients.
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Effects of CCS Deployment on Fossil Fuel Demand and Renewable Energy Diffusion
By I-Tsung TsaiAbstractCarbon capture and storage (CCS) is believed to have a strong potential for reducing impacts from fossil fuel consumption on climate change. The inclusion of CCS into Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in COP 16 is expected to mobilize global adoption of CCS, especially in developing countries where fossil fuel remains a cheaper alternative to meet fast growing energy demands. While fossil fuel demand may be supported with global deployment of CCS, concerns on energy security is likely to intensify competition between coal, oil, and gas as reliable sources of energy. For GCC countries, there is a strong need to understand the implication of large scale CCS deployment on demands for coal, natural gas, crude oil, and renewable energy.
To address the complex issues at hand, we are working on the following research subjects; identifying socially optimal CCS regulation scheme taking into account CCS for CDM and the use of CO2 for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), identifying optimal regulatory scope of CCS in Abu Dhabi taking into account variation in CO2 capture cost and energy penalty across industries, identifying substitution between renewable energy and fossil-fuel (including oil, gas, and coal) with CCS in the regional level taking into account concerns on energy security.
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The role of distributed solar heat engines in an age of mass market silicon PV
By Tom SmithAbstractSolar thermal power generation faces stiff competition in markets which have become increasingly dominated by mass-manufactured silicon-PV. The thermal power generation community has therefore come to concentrate increasingly on the advantages that PV cannot offer: cheap energy storage and hybridisation with fossil fired cycles.
On a distributed/small scale the relative heat losses from and complexities involved in such schemes make them less attractive. However, the potential benefits of a distributed scale are the same that have underpinned the rise of silicon PV: rapid deployability, independence from lossy transmission infrastructure and often the ability to use free land.
A range of possibilities exist between efficient but expensive high-concentration systems (e.g. Dish-Stirling) at one end, and potentially cheaper but less efficient low-concentration systems (e.g. Non-Tracking collectors and ORC) at the other. In this talk I will draw on the examples of two British projects based in Oxford that approach these categories from a novel angle:
• A University project to develop a point-focus, two-axis tracking concentrator based on single-curvature mirrors.
• A project being conducted by Thermofluidics to develop a pumping engine without moving parts based on an Organic working fluid and a Stirling-like configuration.
I will provide a brief summary of the two technologies and their particularities and argue that the first is particularly well suited to Dish-Stirling systems in combination with storage or hybridisation, and the second to using non-tracking collectors or waste heat for applications such as remote fluid pumping, solar cooling and possibly potable water production through desalination/dehumidification.
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Design and investigation of a single air collector
More LessAbstractAir collectors (also called air heaters) may be considered as adiabatic radiative heat exchangers allowing the transformation of the solar radiant energy into heat that is transferred convectively from the absorber to the working fluid. There are basically two types of air collectors. The simple design flat absorber plate with the working fluid flowing over or/and under flowing it, and the absorber-matrix air collector with the working fluid flowing through it. Technical problems linked with usable materials are encountered when using matrix air heaters. This leads to high costs when trying to use performance matrix products such as wire screens. Flat plate collectors of conventional design usually feature a black painted metal plate representing the radiation absorber with the air flowing over or under the plate thereby receiving the heat by convection. High mass flow rates and small flow channel heights are necessary in order to achieve satisfactory heat transfer rate from the absorber to the air stream. Matrix collectors offer large heat transfer area to volume ratios and therefore higher heat transfer rates. Several researchers took up the concept of using porous materials as absorbers. The present investigation reports the development and testing of on an efficient singleglazed corrugated plate absorber air heater. It is developed to toke advantage of the design simplicity and relatively low cost of conventional air collectors. It mainly consists of a corrugated sheet of black-painted galvanized steel
This type of collector can be used for drying or heating applications. Design betterments applied to such single glazed air heater has led to an improvement of the thermal performance with higher heat transfer rates to the air. The use of the absorber in the middle of the collector led to an improvement of 22% compared to the bottom-placed absorber taken as a reference. More improvements may be achieved if the absorber is inclined by an angle of 30° allowing more heat to be recovered (an improvement of 20% to 30% is usually expected). Drilling the mid-placed absorber would lead to a better mixing of the air and may result in higher temperature rises.
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Local Development of Solar Desalination Solutions: The KSU Experience
More LessAbstractThe use of solar energy in desalination has been contemplated for decades. There are many well-known reasons for the growing interest in the use of solar energy to desalinate water. Arguably the most important of those reasons is the fact that solar desalination has been proven to be technically feasible. However, the cost of the solar collectors still represents a significant portion of the overall cost of a solar desalination plant. Therefore, it is very important to reduce the cost of solar collectors in order for solar desalination to be competitive. One of the best methods to do so is to locally develop solar energy conversion systems or modify existing systems such that the cost of converting solar energy into thermal energy is greatly reduced.
In this presentation, one case study of local development of a solar desalination system is outlined. The first prototype of the system consisted of two sets of mirrors that concentrated solar energy on a boiling chamber where saline water was evaporated and then later condensed, producing distilled water. The first prototype yielded a small amount of distilled water, but its cost was low compared to existing technologies. Another prototype with significant modifications was then produced to overcome the issues with the first prototype. Preliminary results are very favorable, and show that local development has many advantages, including significant cost reductions, potential for building local capacity, and fruitful collaboration between local and international institutions.
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Energy Security Symposium: Qatar, 13-15 November 2011
Authors: Chris Llewellyn-Smith and Rabi MohtarAbstractThe Symposium on Energy Security, which we had the honour of directing, was designed to foster collaboration between British universities and universities and research organisations in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The talks that were presented, the abstracts of which are published herewith together with links to the original presentations, provide an excellent overview of issues related to energy security in the Gulf, which served as a basis for identifying possible areas for future collaboration between the UK and GCC countries. In this report we put the talks in the context of the major energy challenges faced by the world and the Gulf region, and outline the major areas for future joint work that were identified.
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is to provide sufficient food, water, and energy to allow everyone on the planet to live decent lives, in the face of rising and population, the threat of climate change, and (sooner or later) declining fossil fuels. Provision of sufficient energy is a necessary (but not sufficient) means to meet the overall challenge. While the Symposium focussed on energy, it should be stressed that there are close links between the challenges of environmentally responsible provision of energy, food and water and with issues such as changing land-use, bio-diversity, urbanisation, and adaptation to climate change. Better understanding of these complex links, based on specific metrics, is required to underwrite the identification of comprehensive solutions. These links are of extreme importance in the GCC countries where abundance of fossil energy has compensated for water scarcity through energy intensive desalination processes and by funding imports of food from other regions.
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