Narrow Results

This paper presents a mathematical model for the evaporator of a cascade refrigeration system, operating down to -40°C. The system uses Carbon dioxide (R744) and Propylene (R1270), respectively, as the low temperature and high temperature cycle refrigerant. The model is developed in Engineering Equation Solver software package following the elemental Number of Transfer Units-effectiveness method, where frost has not been considered. The evaporator is a cross-flow finned tube serpentine heat exchanger, which was divided into numerous elements along the flow path of the refrigerant. The inputs to the model include inlet temperatures and mass flow rates of both the streams along with the heat flux, while the main outputs are the outlet temperatures, refrigeration capacity and HX effectiveness. The model is found to underpredict the refrigeration capacity by about 10% when compared with experimental data.

We investigated the effects of outdoor pressure fluctuations on natural ventilation in a room with two openings. One opening is exposed to an oscillating outdoor pressure and the other is exposed to a fixed neutral pressure. The ventilation airflow rate depends on the amplitude and period of the outdoor pressure fluctuations, the room volume, and the sizes of the openings. Dimensionless parameters are derived from the governing equations that determine indoor pressure responses due to outdoor pressure fluctuations. The pressure responses and the airflow rates through the openings are obtained using a fourth-order Runge–Kutta method. The flow regions are categorized into a synchronized region, an opening resistance region, and a transition region, depending on the dimensionless parameters. Applications are considered using an example building space to investigate the effective air change rates depending on the size of the openings and the period of wind pressure fluctuations.

Heat pump tumble dryers, air-vented dryers and condenser dryers are widely used as clothes dryers. Clothes dryers use hot air to absorb moisture from textiles to get them dry after a wash by passing drying air through the drum. To simulate the drying process of clothes in the drum and to obtain the moisture evaporation rate, it is necessary to use an accurate model to predict the moisture transfer coefficient from the textile to the air in the drum as well as the mass transfer area between the drying air and the textile. In this study, a comprehensive review of the literature on the prediction of the moisture evaporation rate inside the drum of a clothes dryers was conducted. It was found that researchers generally used constant values, fitting models, dimensionless correlations, and Chilton–Colburn analogy to predict the area–mass transfer coefficient. Moreover, few researchers used the effectiveness model for the prediction of moisture evaporation rate. The comprehensive review of the literature showed that all of the previous models for prediction of the moisture evaporation rate have some limitations in terms of generality or accuracy. Therefore, the development of a new accurate model for prediction of the moisture evaporation rate inside the drum of clothes dryers is crucial.

In zones separated by doors with many entrances and exits, it is crucial in terms of energy consumption to protect the conditioned air in the indoor environment from the effects of outside air. The increase in door dimensions and opening frequency make this effect even more evident. Various methods are used to prevent leakage of outside air into the indoor environment. In this study, we investigated the effects of using air curtains on energy consumption during the cooling season in a factory building. The door width and height in this building, which has a high story height, were also large. These 26 doors must remain open all the time because of the production process. With a transient model developed on Transient System Simulation Tool (TRNSYS) coupled with Contaminant Transport Analysis Software (CONTAM), we showed the effects of using the air curtains in different climate conditions. As a result, we demonstrated that using air curtains will provide great savings, especially in cities with high cooling requirements.

Environmentally responsible and minimal natural variation in electric power generation has been a goal of researchers for several decades. With the establishment of the electrical power generation potential from microalgae’s photosynthesis, several researchers revealed interesting microbial fuel cell configurations to improve the output of electrical parameters. However, little work is done to understand the electrical charge collected from photosynthesis. This article proposes a fuel cell-based electrochemical modeling of the micro-photosynthetic power cell. The model is developed, excluding significant analytical assumptions at stationary conditions. Due to the complexity of modeling the electron release from photosynthesis, the electron release reactions are substituted with a simpler redox coupler of similar electric potential to that of photosynthesis. The micro-photosynthetic power cell revealed that the electron collection rate does not directly correlate to the photosynthesis electron chain. It might remain constant for a specific electrical load. The peak power is obtained at a different operating loading than the internal resistance of the device. The experimental open circuit voltage ($\sim$0.96V) and the peak power ($\sim$0.18mW) are predicted accurately by this modeling approach. The results show that the fill factor remains constant with respect to several effective electrode surface areas. Based on this theoretical modeling, we believe that with optimized algal physiological state and micro-photosynthetic power cell’s effective surface area, this micro-photosynthetic power cell will be useful for application in low-power applications.