International Journal of Renewable Energy 

About: International Journal of Renewable Energy is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Renewable energy & Photovoltaic system. It has an ISSN identifier of 1905-7172. Over the lifetime, 224 publications have been published receiving 1031 citations.

A Comprehensive Review on Biomass Torrefaction

Abstract: Biomass is a versatile energy resource that could be used as a sustainable energy resource in solid, liquid and gaseous form of energy sources. Torrefaction is an emerging thermal biomass pretreatment method that has an ability to reduce the major limitations of biomass such as heterogeneity, lower bulk density, lower energy density, hygroscopic behavior, and fibrous nature. Torrefaction, aiming to produce high quality solid biomass products, is carried out at 200-300 °C in an inert environment at an atmospheric pressure. The removal of volatiles through different decomposition reactions is the basic principle behind the torrefaction process. Torrefaction upgrades biomass quality and alters the combustion behavior, which can be efficiently used in the co-firing power plant. This paper presents a comprehensive review on torrefaction of biomass and their characteristics. Despite of the number of advantages, torrefaction is motivated mainly for thermochemical conversion process because of its ability to increase hydrophobicity, grindability and energy density of biomass. In addition to this, torrefied biomass could be used to replace coal in the metallurgical process, and promoted as an alternative of charcoal.

Alternative Energy Development Plan: AEDP 2012-2021

Abstract: Fossil fuels is the major energy source to drive economic growth in the world but the most risk for future security and the major cause of green house gas emission. Thailand falls in the same situation when the economic relies heavily on imported fossil-fuels. From the statistic information source last year illustrates that Thailand’s crude oil imported value in 2011 was as high as 927 billion Baht. This definitely results in loosing the huge amount of money and environmental impact of the country. Therefore, Thailand needs effective mechanism to fight against this crisis. The government of Thailand, therefore, has currently assigned the Ministry of Energy to set up the 10 Year Alternative Energy and Development Plan-AEDP (2011-2021) aiming to create the framework and direction for increasing alternative energy consumption by 25% in 2021. This is based on the forecast that the future energy demand in 2021 at 99,838 ktoe while the existing demand is 71,728 ktoe. The AEDP plan - for a resource efficient, greener economy with more opportune investment - aims for promoting the use of alternative energy to reduce imported fossil-fuels, strengthening energy security, promoting alternative energy consumption at the community levels under the green community concept, supporting domestic manufacturing of alternative energy technology for domestic requirement, and last but not least, research and development for the country’s competitiveness in the world market. In achieving the AEDP, strategies have been set out such as, community participation in the production and consumption, more attractive incentives for private investment in alternative energy, rules and laws amendment, infrastructural improvement, creation of public awareness and educational campaign, and research and development support. The AEDP expects benefits from saving 574,000 million Baht on Thailand’s bill for oil import with the private investment value of 442,000 million Baht. The emission reduction commitment will be reduced to 76 million tons/year with additional income for 23,000 million baht.

Experimental and ANSYS CFD simulation analysis of hemispherical solar still

Abstract: Now days, encountering with lack of potable water is one of the major problems in developing as well as under developing countries. There is a lot of saline water in earth hence if saline water is converted into potable water then problem of potable water will be solved. A device, which converts saline water into drinkable water, is called solar still. In every efficient solar still design, water temperature, distillate output, and difference between water temperature and inner glass cover temperatures are very important work on solar still. Many scientists of world applied their work on solar still to increase output. There are many types of solar still design, in such design there is also a design of hemispherical solar still. Hemispherical solar still possess hemispherical head, which can receive solar radiation from anywhere, hence there is no need of applying solar tracking system. Hence, here, twodimensional three-phase model of hemispherical solar still is made for evaporation as well as condensation process in ANSYS CFD. Simulation results like water temperature, vapor temperature, distillate output compared with actual experimental results of climate conditions of Mehsana (latitude of 23° 59’ and longitude of 72° 38’) of hemispherical solar still. Water temperature and distillate output were good agreement with actual experimental results. Study shows that ANSYS CFD is very powerful as well as efficient tool for design, comparison purpose of hemispherical solar still.

Potential use of solar photovoltaic in Peninsular Malaysia

Abstract: Energy is important to all aspects of development to support population growth, urbanization, industrialization as well as tourism industry. The energy consumption is also increasing and several alternative green energy sources are seriously taken into consideration to fulfill Malaysia's energy demand. The Malaysian government has looked into the renewable energy (RE) sources such as solar energy to be one of the alternatives to face problems related with the increase in energy demand. However, the heavily subsidized of non renewable sources in the country has made the RE sources an uneconomical option. The aim of this paper is to briefly review about incentives and the RE Act adopted by the Malaysian government to ensure long term reliability and security of energy supply. The feed-in-tariff system, solar radiation intensity in Peninsular Malaysia and the role of renewable energy sources in the Five-Fuel Diversification Strategy energy mix are also highlighted in this paper.

Experimental Study of the Drying of Hot Red Pepper in the Open Air, under Greenhouse and in a Solar Drier

Abstract: This work attempts to assess the efficiency and profitability of the greenhouse (used in agriculture) to dry agricultural products. It aims at studying and analyzing the drying of red pepper known as “Baklouti” by three different solar processes. These three drying processes enable us to profit from a free energy coming from the sun. Two experimental devices were used. Three drying kinetics were set up in a natural convection solar drier, under greenhouse and in open sun, respectively. Drying times (including nights) are about 73 hours in the dryer, 79 hours in the greenhouse and 118 hours in open sun. Six thin-layer drying models (Newton, Henderson and Pabis, Modified Henderson and Pabis, Wang and Singh, Logarithmic and Twoterm) were fitted to the experimental data to select a suitable drying equation. The Logarithmic was found to best describe the drying behavior of pepper for open sun, greenhouse and solar drier drying. The experimental results show that the solar tunnel greenhouse dryer must be improved to become competitive to the solar air dryer.