To create a highly efficient photovoltaic-thermal (PV-T) system and maximise the energy and exergy efficiency, this study aims to propose an innovative configuration of a PV-T system comprising wavy tubes with twisted-tape inserts. Following the validation of a numerical model, a parametric study has been conducted to assess the geometrical effects of twisted tape and wavy tubes, as well as the coolant fluid type and velocity, on the overall performance of a PV-T system, located in Shiraz, Iran. It is found that employing twisted tape improves the energy and exergy efficiency by approx. 6.3%. The best configuration yields 12.4% and 16.8% increase in energy and exergy efficiency compared to conventional PV systems. This is achieved at 15% vo

In this study, dead and live anaerobic biomass was used in biosorption of Pb(II), Cr(III) and Cd(II) ions from a synthetic wastewater. The biosorption was investigated by batch adsorption experiments. It was found that, the biosorption capacities were significantly affected by biosorbent dosage. The process follows Langmuir isotherm (regression coefficient 0.995, 0.99 and 0.987 for Pb(II), Cr(III) and Cd(II) ions, respectively, onto dead anaerobic biomass) model with uniform distribution over the biomass surface. The experimental uptake capacity was 51.56, 29.2 and 28 mg/g for Pb(II), Cr(III) and Cd(II), respectively, onto dead anaerobic biomass, compared with 35, 13.6 and 11.8 mg/g for Pb(II), Cr(III) and Cd(II), respectively, onto live

This paper presents a computer simulation model of a thermally activated roof (TAR) to cool a room using cool water from a wet cooling tower. Modeling was achieved using a simplified 1-D resistance-capacitance thermal network (RC model) for an infinite slab. Heat transfer from the cooling pipe network was treated as 2-D heat flow. Only a limited number of nodes were required to obtain reliable results. The use of 6^th order RC-thermal model produced a set of ordinary differential equations that were solved using MATLAB - R2012a. The computer program was written to cover all possible initial conditions, material properties, TAR system geometry and hourly solar radiation. The cool water supply was considered time

Sub-threshold operation has received a lot of attention in limited performance applications.However, energy optimization of sub-threshold circuits should be performed with the concern of the performance limitation of such circuit. In this paper, a dual size design is proposed for energy minimization of sub-threshold CMOS circuits. The optimal downsizing factor is determined and assigned for some gates on the off-critical paths to minimize the energy at the maximum allowable performance. This assignment is performed using the proposed slack based genetic algorithm which is a heuristic-mixed evolutionary algorithm. Some gates are heuristically assigned to the original and the downsized design based on their slack time determined by static tim

The aim of this paper is to design a PID controller based on an on-line tuning bat optimization algorithm for the step-down DC/DC buck converter system which is used in the battery operation of the mobile applications. In this paper, the bat optimization algorithm has been utilized to obtain the optimal parameters of the PID controller as a simple and fast on-line tuning technique to get the best control action for the system. The simulation results using (Matlab Package) show the robustness and the effectiveness of the proposed control system in terms of obtaining a suitable voltage control action as a smooth and unsaturated state of the buck converter input voltage of ( ) volt that will stabilize the buck converter sys

This research aims to suggest formulas to estimate carry-over effects with two-period change-over design, and then, all other effects in the analysis of variance of this design, and find the efficiency of the two-period change-over design relative to another design (say, completely randomized design).

The heat exchanger is a device used to transfer heat energy between two fluids, hot and cold. In this work, an output feedback adaptive sliding mode controller is designed to control the temperature of the outlet cold water for plate heat exchanger. The measurement of the outlet cold temperature is the only information required. Hence, a sliding mode differentiator was designed to estimate the time derivative of outlet hot water temperature, which it is needed for constructing a sliding variable. The discontinuous gain value of the sliding mode controller is adapted according to a certain adaptation law. Two constraints which imposed on the volumetric flow rate of outlet cold (control input) were considered within the rules of the proposed