Publications related to Analysis of a biorefinery integration: application to a sulfite wood pulping process

Renewable energy integration and waste heat valorization in aluminum remelting for co-producing kerosene and methanol

François Maréchal, Daniel Alexander Florez Orrego, Meire Ellen Gorete Ribeiro Domingos, Réginald Germanier

The aluminium sector relies on natural gas for the conversion of recycled scrap into new feedstock, which results in substantial atmospheric emissions. Hydric resources are also impacted, as they serve as heat sinks for the waste heat generated during the ...

Associazione Italiana Di Ingegneria Chimica2024

Design and assessment of an evaporating water-cooled methanation reactor for a SOE-based power-to-methane system

Philippe Aubin

The transition towards clean renewable energy sources, where wind and solar are prone to variation, requires adequate energy storage. Power-to-methane (PtM) systems can be part of the solution. Specifically, solid-oxide-electrolyser (SOE) based PtM systems ...

EPFL2024

Performance of energy piles foundation in hot-dominated climate: A case study in Dubai

Lyesse Laloui, Elena Ravera, Sofie Elaine ten Bosch

Energy piles represent an innovative technology that can help provide sustainable geothermal heating or cooling energy for thermal conditioning purposes. In hot-dominated climates, the interest is to inject heat in the ground and extract energy for space-c ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Absolute energy levels of liquid water from many-body perturbation theory with effective vertex corrections

Alfredo Pasquarello, Thomas Bischoff, Aleksei Tal

We demonstrate the importance of addressing the F vertex and thus going beyond the GW approximation for achieving the energy levels of liquid water in manybody perturbation theory. In particular, we consider an effective vertex function in both the polariz ...

National Academy of Sciences2024

Advanced control strategies to exploit the hydropower potential enhancing ancillary services provision to the power system

Francesco Gerini

The European Union's Green Deal aims for a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. To reach this goal, a massive integration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) into the power grid is necessary. As RES become a large part of the electricity genera ...

EPFL2024

Identification of typical district configurations: A two-step global sensitivity analysis framework

François Maréchal, Jonas Schnidrig, Cédric Terrier

The recent geopolitical conflicts in Europe have underscored the vulnerability of the current energy system to the volatility of energy carrier prices. In the prospect of defining robust energy systems ensuring sustainable energy supply in the future, the ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Decomposition method to evaluate district heating/cooling network potential at urban scale

Luc Girardin, François Maréchal, Raphaël Briguet, Ana Catarina Gouveia Braz, Bingqian Liu

In this work, a tool to design district heating networks (DHN) is presented and applied to the city of Lausanne as a case study. The evaluation of the buildings’ heat/cooling demand is performed using a Geographic Information System (GIS) database, built f ...

Associazione Italiana Di Ingegneria Chimica2024

Self-catalysed frontal polymerisation enables fast and low-energy processing of fibre reinforced polymer composites

Véronique Michaud, Baris Çaglar, Jacobus Gerardus Rudolph Staal

Frontal polymerisation has the potential to bring unprecedented reductions in energy demand and process time to produce fibre reinforced polymer composites. Production of epoxy-based fibre reinforced polymer parts with high fibre volume content, commonly e ...

2024

Green hydrogen production using Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 bioanode and cuprous oxide-based photocathode

Michele Morgante

In recent years, many efforts have been made to find alternative renewable energy sources that can ideally replace the use of fossil fuels in all aspects. One of the new emerging energy technologies is the bioelectrochemical system, of which two types are ...

EPFL2024

Towards edible robots and robotic food

Dario Floreano, Jun Shintake, Bokeon Kwak, Markéta Pankhurst

Edible robots and robotic food — edible systems that perceive, process and act upon stimulation — could open a new range of opportunities in health care, environmental management and the promotion of healthier eating habits. For example, they could enable ...

2024

DBFS: Dynamic Bitwidth-Frequency Scaling for Efficient Software-defined SIMD

Giovanni Ansaloni, Alexandre Sébastien Julien Levisse, Flavio Ponzina, Pengbo Yu

Machine learning algorithms such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are characterized by high robustness towards quantization, supporting small-bitwidth fixed-point arithmetic at inference time with little to no degradation in accuracy. In turn, small ...

IEEE2024

Fusing Pre-existing Knowledge and Machine Learning for Enhanced Building Thermal Modeling and Control

Loris Di Natale

Buildings play a pivotal role in the ongoing worldwide energy transition, accounting for 30% of the global energy consumption. With traditional engineering solutions reaching their limits to tackle such large-scale problems, data-driven methods and Machine ...

EPFL2024

Solar-assisted clean steam generator, a cleaner production approach for sustainable healthcare facilities

Fernando Porté Agel, Ahmad Arabkoohsar, Mohammad Jamshidmofid

Healthcare sector buildings, particularly hospitals, significantly contribute to global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Hospitals require a substantial amount of steam, including the essential hygienic or " clean steam, " that is currently ...

Elsevier Sci Ltd2024

Plasmoid drift and first wall heat deposition during ITER H-mode dual-SPIs in JOREK simulations

Mengdi Kong

The heat flux mitigation during the thermal quench (TQ) by the shattered pellet injection (SPI) is one of the major elements of disruption mitigation strategy for ITER. It's efficiency greatly depends on the SPI and the target plasma parameters, and is ult ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2024

Heuristic Estimation of the Vacuum Energy Density of the Universe: Part II-Analysis Based on Frequency Domain Electromagnetic Radiation

Farhad Rachidi-Haeri, Marcos Rubinstein

In Part I of this paper, an inequality satisfied by the vacuum energy density of the universe was derived using an indirect and heuristic procedure. The derivation is based on a proposed thought experiment, according to which an electron is accelerated to ...

2024

Beyond the average consumer: Mapping the potential of demand-side management among patterns of appliance usage

Claudia Rebeca Binder Signer, Matteo Barsanti, Selin Yilmaz

To support the decarbonisation of the power sector and offset the volatility of a system with high levels of renewables, there is growing interest in residential Demand-Side Management (DSM) solutions. Traditional DSM strategies require consumers to active ...

2024

'Fraternal-twin' ferroelectricity: competing polar states in hydrogen-doped samarium nickelate from first principles

Michele Kotiuga

In ferroelectric switching, an applied electric field switches the system between two polar symmetry-equivalent states. In this work, we use first-principles calculations to explore the polar states of hydrogen-doped samarium nickelate (SNO) at a concentra ...

Iop Publishing Ltd2024

Development of Sustainable Carbohydrate-Based Solvents by Acetal Functionalisation of Biomass

Anastasiia Komarova

Organic solvents are ubiquitous in industrial and domestic applications from the production of pharmaceuticals to household consumer products. The negative impact of most traditional solvents, especially aprotic types, on the environment, health, and safet ...

EPFL2024

Unearthing the foundational role of anharmonicity in heat transport in glasses

The time-honored Allen -Feldman theory of heat transport in glasses is generally assumed to predict a finite value for the thermal conductivity, even if it neglects the anharmonic broadening of vibrational normal modes. We demonstrate that the harmonic app ...

Amer Physical Soc2024

Thermal conductivity of Li 3 PS 4 solid electrolytes with ab initio accuracy

Michele Ceriotti, Federico Grasselli

The vast amount of computational studies on electrical conduction in solid-state electrolytes is not mirrored by comparable efforts addressing thermal conduction, which has been scarcely investigated despite its relevance to thermal management and (over)he ...

Amer Physical Soc2024