A techno-economic feasibility study of liquid bio-fuel production from biomass to meet the demand for public transport in small communities is presented. The methodology adopted in this work is based on calculating the demand of fuels required by transport sector and then estimating the amount of available biomass from various sources which can be treated to produce biofuels to meet the demand ...

Heat engines, such as internal combustion engines, have significant adverse effects on the environment due to their heat and harmful emissions. In addition, they are dependent on energy from fossil resources, which are depleting rapidly and they are not being properly utilized due to the relatively low efficiency of heat engines usually expressed by Carnot's efficiency. The low temperature direct ...

In this paper, a sensitivity analysis of a continuous stirred tank bioreactor (CSTBR) was conducted to determine a parametrically sensitive regime. The growth of a lactic acid bacterium, namely, <i>Lactobacillus casei</i>, in a pH-controlled CSTBR was considered as a process model. Normalized objective sensitivities of the minimum pH were determined with respect to input parameters. A generalized ...

With the associated environmental challenges and unsustainable patterns of construction, there is also notable awareness and willingness among the state bodies to adopt sustainability measures and practices in Kazakhstan. This study explores the drivers of and barriers inhibiting the adoption of sustainability paradigm in the construction context of Kazakhstan. The drivers and barriers were validated ...

This paper presents a numerical prediction on the assessment of natural ventilation on a livestock house built in porous panels, aided by Computational Fluid Dynamics techniques. A typical climatic environment in Cold Regions was taken into consideration. The ventilation performances have been assessed by the distribution of indoor air velocity, turbulence intensity and local mean age of air through ...

This paper aimed to investigate the up-to-date levels of sustainability in the UK construction with special interest to sustainable housing. It also aims to examine the justification behind construction and housing sustainability, and to look at the practicality of transferring current expertise within the UK as well as to an emerging Central Asian country such as Kazakhstan. A synergy of case ...

The most popular technique, so far, for biomass waste to energy conversion has been incineration, but this technique has raised a lot of objection among nature activists due to the release of particulate matter and pollutants like nitrogen oxides (NOx) into the atmosphere. However, advanced non-incineration conversion methods like pyrolysis, thermal gasification, and plasma-arc gasification are ...

This paper presents a numerical simulation of non-normal wind loads on a porous fence. It was found that non-normal wind load has significant impact on the performance of the fence in terms. The performance of the fence was measured as the effective fence zone behind the fence where flow characteristics and normal drag coefficients were maintained within safe level. It is recommended the incidental ...

In this paper, the inhibitory effects of added hydrogen in reactor headspace on fermentative hydrogen production from acidogenesis of glucose by a bacterium, Clostridium acetobutylicum, was investigated experimentally in a batch reactor. It was observed that hydrogen itself became an acute inhibitor of hydrogen production if it accumulated excessively in the reactor headspace. A mathematical model ...

This paper evaluates the thermal performance of a triple-glazed glass window filled with a phase-change material (PCM) compared to the performance of a traditional triple-glazed window with air gaps. The chosen PCM was paraffin wax. A mathematical model to simulate heat transfer within the system was presented. A commercially available software, COMSOL Multiphysics, was used to numerically solve ...