Sunil Kumar Sansaniwal

Bio: Sunil Kumar Sansaniwal is an academic researcher from Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur. The author has contributed to research in topics: Thermal comfort & Renewable energy. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 12 publications receiving 900 citations. Previous affiliations of Sunil Kumar Sansaniwal include Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology.

Recent advances in the development of biomass gasification technology: A comprehensive review

Abstract: Due to fast climate change and foreseen damage through global warming, access to clean and green energy has become very much essential for the sustainable development of the society, globally. Biomass based energy is one of the important renewable energy resources to meet the day to day energy requirements and is as old as the human civilization. Biomass gasification is among few important aspects of bioenergy for producing heat, power and biofuels for useful applications. Despite, the availability of vast literature, technological and material advancements, the dissemination of gasification technology could not overcome the critical barriers for the widespread acceptability over the conventional energy resources. This article presents a comprehensive review on the technical advancements, developments of biomass gasification technology and the barriers being faced by different stakeholders in the wide dissemination of the technology for day to day requirements of the society, followed by recommendations for policy makers to make this technology popular while serving the society.

Progress in solar dryers for drying various commodities

Abstract: Uncertain price rise and rapid depletion of fossil fuels accelerated the development of renewable energy sources in the form of alternative power sources. Solar is an abundant, renewable and sustainable energy source that attracted many eminent researchers across the world to work in the field of solar energy applications. In developing countries, solar drying is capable of fulfilling the increasing demand of healthy, low cost natural foods and need for sustainable income. Solar dryers used for agricultural product drying can be proved to be most useful device from energy conservation point of view that not only save energy but also saves a lot of time, occupying less area, improves product quality and personnel life style. A solar crop drying system does not solely depends on solar energy for its functioning besides many recent advancements in drying process which combines other form of auxiliary heating source with sun energy are also in recent trends for reducing fuel consumption. In this paper, a review of various types of solar dryers namely, direct solar dryers, indirect solar dryers, hybrid solar dryers and their various drying applications are represented.

Global challenges in the sustainable development of biomass gasification: An overview

Abstract: Biomass has proven to be an effective energy carrier capable of fulfilling the growing demand of clean and everlasting energy source for the sustainable development of society Among different biomass conversion routes, biomass gasification is one of the most promising thermochemical routes for conversion of biomass into gaseous fuel for both heat and power generation applications besides biofuel production through fermentation But, we are unable to present these gaseous fuels directly for domestic and commercial uses, which indicates the existence of various barriers including the lack of research in this area In this article, various barriers to the technology, such as challenges with biomass supply chain management, biomass pretreatment, generic shortcomings, gas conditioning and conversion technology have been highlighted Based on recent studies, the gasification of biomass, gas conditioning, government policies and utilization of fuel gas for heat and power generation applications have been identified as the greatest challenges Despite the availability of different gasifier reactors, a highly efficient reactor design is yet to be developed for successful operation and commercialization Thus, an advanced gasification system with efficient gas conditioning technology can significantly overcome many of the barriers

Energy and exergy analyses of various typical solar energy applications: A comprehensive review

Abstract: The overuse of fossil fuels in real life applications has caused their rapid depletion and fast climate change due to global warming and thus access to eco-friendly energy resources has become essential to meet the growing demand of clean energy. With this view, solar energy has proven to be an effective alternative and clean source of energy for the sustainable development of the society worldwide. Solar energy is a cheap, abundant and everlasting source of renewable energy and thus it can be integrated with different systems deals with energy consumption to overcome the dependency of present society on conventional fuels. Such integration of solar energy has given an opportunity for several studies based on the energy and exergy approaches. The energy analysis is very crucial in the study of process effectiveness while the exergetic analysis is another important tool to investigate the realistic behaviour of process involving various energy losses and internal irreversibility. The main objective of this article is to bring out valuable recommendations for wide exploitation of solar energy systems for different applications, from a thermodynamics perspective. Therefore, the present article has summarized the previous findings on energy and exergy analyses of different solar energy systems (solar drying, solar air conditioning and refrigeration, solar water heating, solar cooking and solar power generation through solar photovoltaic and concentrated solar power techniques used for various heat and power generation applications).

Analysis of ginger drying inside a natural convection indirect solar dryer: An experimental study

Abstract: In this paper, a natural convection indirect solar cabinet dryer has been fabricated to study the drying behaviour of ginger rhizomes in terms of its convective heat transfer coefficient and moisture removing rate (% db). Various experiments were conducted during the months of March and April 2014 at Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology, Hisar (295’5’’N, 7545’55’’E), India. Experimental data obtained were used to evaluate the Nusselt number constants using linear regression method. Considering these constants, the average value of convective heat transfer coefficient was obtained and observed to decrease with increase in mass of ginger samples and progression of drying days with variation from 0.59 to 5.42 W/m C for different mass of ginger samples. The moisture removing rate was reported to increase with increase in mass of ginger samples and decreases significantly with the progression of drying days. The average collector efficiency was also observed to vary from 14.97 to 16.14% under increasing and decreasing trends of solar radiations from morning to noon and noon to evening respectively. Modified page model was reported best for describing the drying behaviour of different mass of ginger samples. The experimental error in terms of percent uncertainty ranged from 29.19 to 46.25%.

Recent advances in the gasification of waste plastics. A critical overview

Abstract: The current review provides an assessment of the main waste plastics valorization routes to produce syngas and H2, thus covering different gasification strategies and other novel alternative processes, such as pyrolysis and in-line catalytic steam reforming The studies dealing with plastics gasification are in general scarce However, due to the knowledge acquired on biomass and coal gasification, the state of development of plastic gasification technologies is considerable and, in fact, several gasification studies have been performed at pilot scale units Air gasification is the most studied and developed strategy and pursues the production of a syngas for energy purposes In spite of the higher H2 content and heating value of the gas produced by steam gasification, this alternative faces significant challenges, such as the energy requirements of the process and the tar content in the syngas Moreover, the co-gasification of plastics with coal and biomass appears to be a promising valorization route due to the positive impact on process performance and greater process flexibility Other promising alternative is the pyrolysis and in-line reforming, which allows producing a syngas with high hydrogen content and totally free of tar

Biofuels production by biomass gasification: A review

Abstract: The production of biofuels from renewable sources is a major challenge in research. Methanol, ethanol, dimethyl ether (DME), synthetic natural gas (SNG), and hydrogen can be produced from syngas which is the result of the gasification of biomasses. Syngas composition varies according to the gasification technology used (such as fixed bed reactors, fluidized bed reactors, entrained flow reactors), the feedstock characteristics, and the operating parameters. This paper presents a review of the predominant biomass gasification technologies and biofuels obtained from syngas by biomass gasification.