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Although a clear definition of energy poverty has not been reported in the scientific literature or in general energy directives, this condition affects about 10% of European people. During the last three years, the COVID-19 pandemic combined with the increase in energy bill costs due to energy conflicts has determined the increment of energy poverty. The Renewable Energy Directive, that defines a new legal entity named Renewable Energy Community as a new end-users’ organization, recognizes the chance for low-income households to benefit from being able to access affordable energy tariffs and energy efficiency measures thanks to these new entities. Thus, this paper analyses the energy, economic, and environmental performances of a renewable energy community composed of three residential users distributed in two buildings located in the south of Italy, and one of these buildings is equipped by a rooftop photovoltaic plant. The plants were modelled and simulated through HOMERPRO simulation software while the building energy loads are real and were imported from an energy distributor dataset and were processed in the MATLAB simulation interface. The analysis concerned the comparison of the energy performance achieved by one case in which no renewable plants were installed, and by another case in which the end-users took part in the renewable energy community by sharing the photovoltaic “produced” electricity. The investigation was conducted in terms of the quantity of electricity imported from the power grid and consumed on-site, the avoided emissions, and the operating costs. The business plan has been devoted to defining the advantages of the energy community for vulnerable end-users in a popular neighborhood council estate by evaluating the social energy poverty indexes. The results showed that through the renewable energy community, a mitigation of energy poverty is obtained within a range of 12–16%.

This study energetically, exergetically and economically analyses a hybrid electricity generation system. The proposed system is a combination of a biomass gasifier, a solid oxide fuel cell module, an indirectly heated air turbine and a supercritical carbon dioxide power cycle. Influences of major designing and operating plant parameters, viz. current density of the solid oxide fuel cell, pressure ratio of the air compressor, turbine inlet temperature of the CO2 gas turbine, on the performance of the proposed system have been examined. The proposed system exhibits the highest first law efficiency of 51% at the current density of 2000 A/m2 and cell temperature of 1123 K, air compressor pressure ratio of 4.4, CO2 gas turbine inlet pressure and temperature of 10.14 MPa and 423 K. At this aforesaid condition, the proposed system exhibits a second law efficiency of 45%. It is found that the highest amount (40.70%) of exergy destruction takes place at the biomass gasifier, followed by the solid oxide fuel cell (20.05%). The economic analysis predicts that the minimum achievable levelized unit cost of electricity is 0.095 $/kWh.Graphical abstract

This study aims to propose the repowering of an existing Italian natural-gas fired combined cycle power plant through the integration of Molten Carbonate Fuel Cells (MCFC) downstream of the gas turbine for CO2 capture and to pursuit an exergetic analysis of the two schemes. The flue gases of the turbine are used to feed the cathode of the MCFC, where CO2 is captured and transported to the anode while generating electric power. The retrofitted plant produces 787.454 MW, in particular, 435.29 MW from the gas turbine, 248.9 MW from the steam cycle, and 135.283 MW from the MCFC. Around 42.4% of the exergy destruction has been obtained, the majority belonging to the combustion chamber and, in minor percentages, to the gas turbine and the MCFC. The overall net plant efficiency and net exergy efficiency are estimated to be around 55.34 and 53.34%, respectively. Finally, the specific CO2 emission is around 66.67 kg/MWh, with around 2 million tons of carbon dioxide sequestrated.

The food industry is responsible for supplying the food demand of the ever-increasing global population. The food chain is one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and global food waste accounts for one-third of produced food. A solution to this problem is preserving crops, vegetables, and fruits with the help of an ancient method of sun drying. For drying agricultural and marine products, several types of dryers are also being developed. However, they require a large amount of energy supplied conventionally from pollutant energy sources. The environmental concerns and depletion risks of fossil fuels persuade researchers and developers to seek alternative solutions. To perform drying applications, sustainable solar power may be effective because it is highly accessible in most regions of the world. Greenhouse dryers (GHDs) are simple facilities that can provide large capacities for drying agricultural products. This study reviews the integration of GHDs with different solar technologies, including photovoltaic (PV), photovoltaic-thermal (PVT), and solar thermal collectors. Additionally, the integration of solar-assisted greenhouse dryers (SGHDs) with heat pumps and thermal energy storage (TES) units, as well as their hybrid configuration considering integration with other renewable energy sources, is investigated to improve their thermal performance. In this regard, this review presents and discusses the most recent advances in this field. Additionally, the economic analysis of SGHDs is presented as a key factor to make these sustainable facilities commercially available.

In this paper, thermodynamic analysis of a biomass based advanced power generation system has been performed. The proposed system is a combination of a biomass gasifier with gas cleaning unit, a solid oxide fuel cell module, an indirectly heated air turbine and a supercritical CO2 power cycle with two stage compression and intercooling. Parametric analysis has been carried out to investigate the influences of major plant parameters, such as, the current density of fuel cell and the air turbine pressure ratio, on power output and overall plant efficiency. The results show that the proposed system can yield overall efficiency in the range of 30-55%.

Factual material selection is essential in the manufacturing arena with a superior product and minimum cost. This paper highlights on the advanced multi-criteria approaches namely additive ratio assessment (ARAS) and multi-attributive border approximation area comparison (MABAC) methods for the best material selection of a hybrid composite using aluminum (Al) as base material varying different reinforcement weights and recycling with various industrial wastes by stir casting. Al/WCE gives superior tribomechanical properties at lower cost than the other reinforcements. ARAS and MABAC methods are applied, based on the properties and attributes of the hybrid composites, to compare between the computational and experimental results. The results exactly corroborate with the previous research results which authenticate the expediency of these methods during the solving of complex hybrid material selection problems. Out of 48 different samples, the best hybrid composite material obtained by ranking is material number A30 by ARAS approach (rank 1) which is Al+Al2O3 at 12.5% wt. addition and material number A24 (rank 2) which is heat treated 12.5%wt. WCE. But the same A30 is obtained to be rank 5 and A24 is obtained to be rank 1 by MABAC method. A24 is obtained to be the best hybrid composite after the experimentation.

Xanthogranulomatous pylonephritis is a rare, chronic severe renal infection. We report an unusual case of xanthogranulomatous pylonephritis associated with pelvi-ureteric junction obstruction without any renal calculus.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) leads to enormous financial losses from issues such as high morbidity, mortality, man-days lost, hospital length of stay, health-care, and social costs. In humans, over prescription of antimicrobials, which is presumably higher during COVID, has been identified as the major source of selection for antimicrobial resistant bacteria; however, use of antimicrobials in food and companion animals, fish, and vegetables, and the environmental resistance gene pool, also play important roles. The possibilities of unnecessary use of antibiotics as prophylaxis during and after COVID in livestock and companion animals exist in low-and middle-income countries. A considerable loss in gross domestic product (GDP) is also projected in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) due to AMR by the year 2050, which is further going to be reduced due to economic slowdown in the post-COVID period. Veterinary hospitals dedicated to pets have cropped up, especially in urban areas of LMICs where use of antimicrobials has also been increased substantially. The inevitable preventive habit built up during COVID with the frequent use of hand sanitizer might trigger AMR due to the presence of cross-resistance with disinfectants. In LMICs, due to the rising demand for animal protein, industrial food animal production (IFAP) is slowly replacing the small-scale backyard farming system. The lack of stringent regulations and monitoring increased the non-therapeutic use of antimicrobials in industrial farms where the persistence of antimicrobial resistant bacteria has been associated with several factors other than antimicrobial use, such as co-resistance, cross-resistance, bacterial fitness, mixing of new and old animals, and vectors or reservoirs of bacterial infection. The present review describes types of antimicrobials used in agri-food chains and companion animals in LMICs with identification of the gap in data, updated categories of prevalent antimicrobial resistant bacteria, the role of animal farms as reservoirs of resistant bacteria, and mitigation strategies, with a special focus on the pivotal strategy needed in the post-COVID period.

Indian Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve (SBR) comprising over 100 estuarine islands and shared by human habitation and mangrove forests is considered to be a potential area for coastal aquaculture. This study, using LANDSAT imageries of the last two decades (1999–2019), delineated the spatiotemporal expansion of aquaculture at the expense of agricultural land, mudflats, and some mangroves. It also estimated a futuristic land transformation to aquaculture using the Cellular Automata-Markov Chain model. From the geospatial analysis, it is observed that (1) the aquacultures are mostly located around 22° 30′N, i.e., far away from the saline seafront, (2) total aquaculture area has increased to nearly 5.82% of the entire SBR in 2019 from 3.59% in 1999 and, (3) cyclone Aila and its surge inundation have influenced in their expansion. This growth of aquaculture took place with the loss of 3.71% (10,536.67 ha) agricultural land, 3.87% (730.40 ha) mudflat, and 0.28% (623.23 ha) mangrove from 1999 to 2009, and 6.02% (13,471.50 ha) agricultural land, 9.98% (1583.64 ha) mudflat, and 0.18% (382.35 ha) mangrove during 2009–2019. According to the predictive modeling, ~ 6% of the present agriculture area is prognosticated to be converted to aquaculture by the next decade under a business-as-usual scenario.