Ben Bin Xu

By Muhammad Wakil Shahzad, Kim Choon Ng, Muhammad Burhan, Chen Qian, Doskhan Ybyraiykul, M. Kumja, Muhammad Ahmad Jamil, Yinzhu Jiang, Nida Imtiaz and Ben Bin Xu

A major fraction of secondary energy consumed for our daily activities, such as electricity and low-grade heat sources, emanates from the conversion of fossil fuels in power plants. In the seawater desalination processes, the energy efficiency is usually expressed in kWh electricity or kWh of low-grade heat per unit volume of water produced. Although kWh energy unit provides a quantitative measure of input energy, it has subtly omitted the embedded quality of supplied energy to desalination plants. In assuming the equivalency across dissimilar energy forms, it results in a thermodynamic misconception that has eluded the desalination industry hitherto, i.e., not all units of derived energy are created equal. An incomplete energy efficacy approach may result in the inferior selection of desalination processes to be deployed;—a phenomenon observed in the trend of installed desalination capacity globally. Operating a less efficient desalination plant over its lifespan would create much economic burdens including a higher unit cost of water, higher CO2 emissions and greater brine discharge to the environment. This book chapter clarifies the key concept and a thermodynamic framework to rectify the misconception in energy consumption, permitting energy planners and designers to optimize deployment of future desalination plants for energy sustainability. We have derived conversion factors to convert assorted derived energies into standard primary energy for fair comparison.

Part of the book: Alternative Energies and Efficiency Evaluation

By Muhammad Ahmad Jamil, Muhammad Wakil Shahzad, Ben Bin Xu, Muhammad Waqar Ashraf, Kim Choon Ng, Nida Imtiaz and Haseeb Yaqoob

Rising global temperature has triggered the cooling demand in the last three decades with growing predictions for the future. The use of conventional energy-intensive and high global warming chemical-based cooling systems is working in a loop, increasing the global warming rate, emissions, and cooling system inventory. Therefore, the development of an innovative cooling system with high energy efficiency, low monetary cost, and environmentally sustainable. The indirect evaporative cooling-based systems have shown potential to serve the purpose because of low energy consumption, absence of energy, and cost-intensive equipment like compressors and water-based operation. A novel indirect evaporative cooler based on an innovative operational configuration is proposed, fabricated, and tested experimentally. The Proposed system has several advancements compared to the conventional indirect evaporative coolers like high operational reliability, low maintenance, and better control of the processes in the system. The study shows that the proposed system can achieve a temperature drop of as high as 14°C. The maximum cooling capacity of the system is calculated as 110 W, and the cooling performance index of 28. The performance of the cooler improves with increasing outdoor air temperature which makes it suitable for diverse climatic conditions. Moreover, the proposed design offers several benefits due to novel operational configurations by addressing limitations in the earlier systems.

Part of the book: Recent Updates in HVAC Systems