Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

About: Universiti Teknologi Malaysia is a education organization based out in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Membrane & Control theory. The organization has 21644 authors who have published 39500 publications receiving 520635 citations.

Electricity consumption from renewable and non-renewable sources and economic growth: Evidence from Latin American countries

Abstract: This study explores the effect of renewable and non-renewable electricity consumption on economic growth in 18 Latin American countries. To achieve the goal of this study a panel Gross Domestic Product (GDP) model was constructed taking the period 1980–2010 into account. From the Pedroni cointegration test results it was found that renewable electricity consumption, non-renewable electricity consumption, labor, gross fixed capital formation, and total trade are cointegrated. Moreover, the panel Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) test results revealed that all above the mentioned variables have a long run positive effect on GDP growth in the investigated countries. The Vector Error-Correction (VEC) Granger causality model results revealed the existence of feedback causality between the variables. The results of the study indicated that renewable electricity consumption is more significant than non-renewable electricity consumption in promoting economic growth in the investigated countries in the long run and the short run. Based on the results of this study, it is recommended that the investigated countries should increase their investment on renewable energy projects to increase the role of electricity consumption from renewable sources. In addition, it is essential that these countries should reduce their non-renewable electricity consumption by increasing their energy efficiency and implementing energy saving projects. By applying these recommendations, these countries would be able to mitigate global warming and reduce their dependency on fossil fuel to increase their energy security.

Optimal distributed renewable generation planning: A review of different approaches

Abstract: Distributed generation has gained a lot of attractions in the power sector due to its ability in power loss reduction, increased reliability, low investment cost, and most significantly, to exploit renewable-energy resources, which produce power with minimum greenhouse-gas emissions like wind, photovoltaic and micro turbines. Installation of distributed generation at non-optimal location can result in various problems such as an increase in system losses and costs, voltage rise and fluctuations, reliability and stability problems. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an optimization or heuristic technique based methodology to identify the optimal placement of distributed renewable generation for a given system that can provide economic, environmental and technical advantages. There are several researches that study on the optimal distributed renewable generation location by their imposed constraints and objectives. However, the systematic principle for this issue is still an unsolved problem. This paper reviews some of the most popular distributed renewable generation placement methods, including 2/3 Rule, Analytical Methods, Optimal Power Flow, Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming, various types of Artificial Intelligent optimization techniques and Hybrid Intelligent System. Each methodology has its own features and potential for significantly promote the applicability of distributed renewable generation in power systems.

Removal of heavy metals from wastewater using carbon nanotubes

Abstract: The discovery of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and the prospect of developing novel carbon-based nanomaterials have attracted researchers worldwide. CNTs have great potential as a novel type of adsorbent due to their unique properties such as chemical stability, mechanical and thermal stability, and the high surface area, which leads to various applications including hydrogen storage, protein purification and water treatment. Removal of heavy metals from industrial wastewater leads to the biggest challenge nowadays. To reduce environmental problems, the CNTs are promising candidates for the adsorption of heavy metals. In this study, extremely brief summaries of liquid pollutant purification are reviewed.