Sequestration research up to the present time indicates that between subterranean and sea-bottom options, there is adequate capacity for sequestration of all foreseeable CO2 emissions from fossil fuel production, provided that we invest sufficiently in facilities to separate and sequester it. The risk associated with sequestration, both from leakage under ordinary conditions and from seismic […]

In addition to the BWR/PWR reactors discussed in the previous section, a number of other reactor designs are either in use or under development at the present time. Some are remnants from the early experimental years in the evolution of nuclear energy, while others have emerged more recently in response to the need for lower […]

In the preceding section, we considered sunlight traveling through the atmosphere, without necessarily considering the effect of the sun’s position in the sky on the amount of energy available. In this section, we introduce several other terms used to discuss solar geometry, and then chart the sun’s position in the sky as a function of […]

A more comprehensive approach to system design should account for how PV cell output is affected by temperature, insolation flux density, suboptimum panel slope, and characteristics of the local solar climate as it varies throughout the year. Based on insolation summed (perhaps hourly) over a month, the average daily output of a panel, E, can […]

Useful thermal energy obtained from a solar collector is the difference between incident solar radiation transmitted through the glazing and absorbed as heat, and heat lost back to ambient conditions. The difference is the heat transferred to the working fluid. In a steady state, the governing equation, normalized to the absorber plate area, is qx […]

The analysis procedure in the above example can be extended to find the best combination of passive solar area and building insulation. One possible method is an extension of the method to considering a range of passive solar areas—areas that fit, architecturally and reasonably, into the south wall of the building. Each building system is […]

The purpose of this section is to develop a methodology for calculating available power based on airflow and turbine blade shape. In order to do this, a number of variables must be introduced, starting in Fig. 12-16. The figure shows a strip of width dr at a loca­tion r along the length of the blade […]

The most recent generation of EVs have opted for ac motors due to superior performance. In such a vehicle, the drivetrain consists of a battery bank, a power controller that converts electrical energy from dc to ac, a motor, and a transmission to the driven wheels, as shown in Fig. 13-4. Control over the vehicle […]