American Journal of Energy Research

Building material and components play a crucial role in solar buildings construction and planning. The literature review of the research emphasize that solar architecture and building integration is in need of some productive design strategies which focuses on reuse of recycled building materials. This paper aims at suggesting a mechanism for optimal use of recycled materials in construction industry which serve energy efficiency as one of the top priorities. The research questions are: 1- what are the priorities of using recycled material as related to energy efficiency issues? 2- Which recycled materials can be used in construction to meet energy efficiency in solar buildings? Recycled cellular glass is selected as research sample to develop inference mechanism. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods as well as problem solving approach are used in this study to answer the research questions related to construction industry particularly energy protection. The findings indicate increase in energy price and increase in the difference between cost of melting raw materials and melting recycled glass; and enactment of regulations for reducing extraction of raw materials and using recycled ones instead in construction projects can significantly affect the cost-effectiveness of using recycled materials in producing cellular glass; especially in contemporary architecture and future ZEB sustecture. In the other word recycled building materials can be adopted in solar architecture to energy efficiency.

American Journal of Energy Research. 2014, 2(1), 18-23. DOI: 10.12691/ajer-2-1-3
Pub. Date: March 18, 2014

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Energy Efficiency with Undesirable Output at the Economy-Wide Level: Cross Country Comparison in OECD Sample

by Nevzat Simsek

Original Research

Measuring the environmental efficiency of countries is important in the climate change process. The aim of this paper is to measure the energy efficiency of OECD countries with undesirable output. For this purpose, the Bad Output index (non-radial and non-oriented, CRS) developed by Tone (2001) is used in order to obtain the efficiency scores for the period 1995-2009. In this paper, I focus on the production process where labour, capital stock (mostly omitted in such papers), and energy consumption are inputs, GDP is a desirable output and CO₂emission is an undesirable output. To see the energy inefficiencies separately, if there are any, energy input is considered as three separate variables in the model. For this purpose, oil and natural gas consumption are incorporated as one input. Hydropower and nuclear are incorporated as another input. Coal is the third input. An important contribution of this paper is to use various proxy variables for the capital stock. Determining the reasons of these inefficiencies is important for these countries. But modelling the factors behind these inefficiencies is the subject of another paper.

American Journal of Energy Research. 2014, 2(1), 9-17. DOI: 10.12691/ajer-2-1-2
Pub. Date: February 23, 2014

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Battery Monitoring and Power Management for Automotive Systems

by Anila Thyagarajan, R. Raja Prabu and G. Uma

Original Research

New vehicle electric systems are promoted by the needs of fuel economy and ecology as well as by new functions for the improvement of safety and comfort, reliability, and the availability of the vehicle. Electrically controlled and powered systems for braking, steering and stabilization need a reliable supply of electrical energy. The planned generation of electrical energy (only when it is economically beneﬁcial meaningful), an adequate storage, and thrifty energy housekeeping with an intelligent integration of the battery as the storage medium into the overall concept of the vehicle Energy Management, and early detection of possible restrictions of reliability by Battery Monitoring allows for actions by the Energy Management well in advance, while the driver need not be involved at all. To meet today’s requirements for Battery Monitoring and Energy Management, solutions have been developed for series vehicles launched in years 2001–2003, operating at the 14 V level. In this paper, Battery Monitoring and Management has been done by considering the change of lead-acid battery properties over life, including grid corrosion, water loss, changes of active material properties, loss of active material availability, etc. Also, Battery Monitoring and Power Management to provide cranking capability several days ahead is also analyzed.

American Journal of Energy Research. 2014, 2(1), 1-8. DOI: 10.12691/ajer-2-1-1
Pub. Date: February 15, 2014

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