Renewable energy and energy efficiency play a vital role in making our food, water and energy systems more sustainable, as well as reducing the strain between the three. Renewable energy and energy efficiency are essential for managing water resources and food production in a more socially and environmentally-responsible way. Consumers are playing an important role by increasingly exercising more involvement in energy decisions as illustrated by the growing number of distributed renewable generation systems and energy efficiency improvements at homes and businesses.

Flow and temperature field inside a direct type solar dryer is investigated using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The coupled field analysis is carried out in ANSYS Fluent 12.0. The effect of location of inlet and outlet vents on the predicted velocity and temperature field of the air inside the dryer is analyzed. It is observed that a more uniform air flow and temperature distributions results for inlet vent location at bottom wall of drying chamber.

Low cost solar cookers are developed and tested. The paper discusses the methodology, development and testing of a reflective panel type low cost solar cooker. From the tests, it is found that such low cost solar cookers are dependable and viable alternative to cooking using conventional sources. The cooker is found suitable for cooking once in winter and twice in summer for 1-2 persons with the estimated cost of Indian Rs. 200.00.

This study presents experimental investigation in to the effects of using mixture of producer gas and hydrogen in five different proportions as a secondary fuel with diesel as pilot fuel at wide range of load conditions in dual fuel operation of a 4 cylinder turbocharged and intercooled 62.5 kW gen-set diesel engine at constant speed of 1500 RPM. Secondary fuel Substitution is in different percentage of diesel at each load. To generate producer gas, the rice husk was used as source in the downdraft gasifier. The performance and emission characteristics of the dual fuel engine are compared with that of diesel engine at different load conditions. It was found that of all the combinations tested, mixture combination of PG:H2=(60:40)% is the most suited one at which the brake thermal efficiency is in good comparison to that of diesel operation. Decreased NOx emissions and increased CO emissions were observed for dual fuel mode for all the fuel combinations compared to diesel fuel operation.

Computers, laptops and mobile devices – information technology (IT) accounts for 2% of human greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, as evidenced in a study by Global Action Plan, a UKbased environmental organization. This figure can be reduced if the green segment, or Green IT, continues to grow. Energy can also be saved through cloud computing, namely the principle of outsourcing the programs and functions of one’s own computer to service providers over the internet. This also means sharing storage capacity with others. This paper highlights the impact of information technology applications towards enhancing energy efficiency of the systems.

Titanium dioxide thin films were deposited on silicon (111) and glass substrates by using direct current (dc) magnetron sputtering system. Thin films were deposited with different O2 gas flow rate (1, 3, 9, 12 sccm) while keeping Ar gas flow rate constant at 30 sccm. The samples exhibit amorphous phase as deposited and become polycrystalline at 350ºC. X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies confirmed existence of anatase and rutile phase after post deposition annealing. As deposited films were transparent and their band gap increases with increase in oxygen gas flow rate. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy data confirmed the existence of Ti-O band present in deposited films.

An experimental investigation has been performed on a 4 cylinder (turbocharged and intercooled) 62.5 kW gen-set dual fuel diesel engine. Break specific fuel consumption (bsfc), break thermal efficiency (bte) along with HC, CO, CO2 and NOx at various mixture ratios of methanol substitutions and loads have been investigated. The minimum and maximum BSFC were found to be 0.18 and 1.01 at 40 and 10% of full engine load and 40 and 60% of methanol substitution compared to pure diesel operation where the minimum and maximum BSFC were found to be 0.26 and 0.434 at 20 and 10% of full load condition. The minimum and maximum BTE were found to be 7.19 and 40.8 at 60 and 40% methanol substitution and at 10 and 40% load conditions whilst for pure diesel operation it was found to be 19.7 and 40.4 at 10 and 40% load conditions respectively. A two factor, three-level full factorial design was employed and the experimental results are in accordance with the results obtained.

This paper presents computational analysis of centerline film cooling effectiveness using Navier-Stokes equation solver. Film cooling effectiveness has been varied along the downstream of cooling holes. The computational model has been validated with benchmark experimental literature. Computational study compares film cooling effectiveness over various blowing ratios (M) and various hole shapes. The k-? shear stress transport model of FLUENT software has been used for the computational analysis. The hole geometry and blowing ratios have important effects on film cooling effectiveness. Computational results reveal that film cooling effectiveness increases with increase in blowing ratio whereas effectiveness decreases due to intermixing of coolant and mainstream flow and due to coolant jet lift off. The best results were obtained for fan-shaped hole with M=1.00. While for lower blowing ratio, coolant is unable to spread over a longer distance downstream of cooling holes.

Biofuel demand is unquestionable in order to reduce greenhouse gaseous emission which can lead to climatic changes and global warming effect. Finding sufficient supply of clean energy for the upcoming is one of the society’s most daunting challenges and is directly linked with global stability, economic prosperity and quality of life. Endophytic microbes reside in the healthy part of the plant without causing any symptoms of disease. It is well known that the endophytic microbes produces wide variety of bioactive compound having, antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, antitumor, antioxidant, antiinflammatory, immunosuppressive drugs, and volatile organic compounds having similarity with conventional diesel fuel. Now the endophytic fungi, have also been known to possess a suitable lipid matrix at high concentrations and volatile organic compounds having similarity with conventional diesel fuel that make them promising sources for next generation biofuels. This would be more efficient and having lesser number of biosynthetic steps in production, can be brought to immediate use in the existing internal combustion engines without taking about any major modification in automobile design. The present article therefore aims to review the current status of research in the field of alternative source of energy emphasizing endophytic fungi as a source of biofuel precursor, in order to encourage and generate interest among research groups across India and the world for initiating and undertaking more enthusiastic and intensive research activity on endophytic fungi from the Indian subcontinent having the potential to make fuel-related hydrocarbons.

: Film cooling is employed for effective cooling in nozzles and combustion chambers using a spray of coolant fluid in the mainstream flow to cool the body. Experimental analysis was performed elaborately in the past years to get an exact analysis of film cooling effectiveness with different parameters. The current work outlines the entire experimental work done to expand the available knowledge on film cooling and its techniques. The paper discusses in detail the work done on gaseous and liquid film cooling and the research performed to date on flat plate cooling as well. The paper also outlines in brief the studies done on the mechanism of entrainment and film cooling. Studies performed to analyze the influence of various parameters such as blowing ratio, measurement flux ratio, density ratio, flow structure, hole geometry, surface roughness and boundary layer displacement thickness are also outlined in this paper. This paper thus outlines the entire experimental work performed on film cooling applied to flat plates to date.

In the present paper, development of producer gas fuelled 4 stroke diesel engine has been investigated. Producer gas from biomass has been examined and successfully operated with 4 stroke diesel engine. The effects of higher and lower loads were investigated on the dual fuel mode. The experimental investigations revealed that at lower loads dual fuel operation with producer gas shows lower efficiency due to lower combustion rate cause by low calorific value of the producer gas. Beyond 40% load the brake thermal efficiency of dual fuel operation improved due to faster combustion rate of producer gas and higher level of premixing. It can be observed that at lower load and 20% opening of producer gas the gaseous fuel substitution found to be 56% whereas at 100% opening of producer gas it reaches 78% substitution. The CO2 emission increased at high producer gas opening and high load because at 100% producer gas maximum atoms of carbons were there and at high load condition the diesel use increased. At 80% load and producer gas varying from 20% to 100. Power output was almost comparable to diesel power with marginal higher efficiency. Producer gas is one such technology which is environmentally benign and holds large promise for future.

The Pt-Pd/C electrocatalyst was synthesized on graphite substrate by the electrochemical codeposition technique. The Physico-chemical characterization of the catalyst was done by SEM, XRD and EDX. The electrochemical characterization of the Pt-Pd/C catalyst for 2-propanol electro-oxidation was studied over a range of 2-propanol concentrations in alkaline medium using cyclic voltammetry, chronoamperometry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The activity of 2-propanol oxidation increased with the increase of 2-propanol concentration, at 2-propanol concentration greater than 1.0 M, no change in the oxidation peak current density is because of excess 2-propanol at the electrode surface and/or depletion of OH-at the electrode surface. The Pt-Pd/C catalyst shows good stability and the low value of charge transfer resistance. The enhanced electrocatalytic activity of the electrodes is ascribed to the synergistic effect of higher electrochemical surface area, preferred OH-adsorption and ad-atom contribution on the alloyed surface.

We elucidate few critical facts about the lithium superionic conductor (Li10GeP2S12) and few other compounds of the same family as the electrolyte in Li-ion cells. The dimensionality of diffusion process and existence of ‘structural’ lithiums are not well understood in this material. From the ab-initio MD simulations, we find that the material transport Li-ions predominantly in the crystallographic cdirection. Nevertheless, the cross-channel diffusion is significant as well. We explored the mobility of individual Li-ions and do not find evidence that supports the proposition of structural Li-ions in LGPS. We find nominal effect of local Ge-P ordering and of Li-concentration change on diffusivity, which not only provides information about the invariance of diffusivity at different conditions of operation, but also ensures that identification of the ground state structure in LGPS having partially occupied Li and Ge/P sublattices should have minimal effect on the diffusion analysis. We computed the dilute Li insertion and extraction voltages for LGPS from ab-initio total energy calculation. The dilute voltages indicate that the material is prone to react by exchanging Li-ions with the electrodes at typical operating range of voltages indicating formation of some interphase at the electrode-electrolyte interface, which necessitates further experimental investigation.