in the sector of electricity production, the existence of investment resources limitation and environmental factors are the main factors that influence this process. the reduction of costs and the destructive impacts of environmental have been always mentioned by specialists. consequently, the drasticality of the environmental protection and the electric-energy production lead to focus on solar...

The USDA, Forest Service, Forest Products Lab funds several grants each year for the purpose of studying woody biomass utilization. One selected project proposed removing small diameter stems and unmerchantable woody material from National Forest lands and delivering it to a coal-fired power plant in Alabama for energy conversion. The Alabama Power Company will test the utilization of the woody...

Current reliance on fossil fuels is unsustainable due to pollution and finite supplies. Microbial cell factories serve as promising alternatives renewable energy resources. Microorganisms generate electricity in their metabolism; act as catalysts for converting the chemical energy into electricity. In Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC), electrons provided by microorganisms flow through an electrical ext...

Hydrogen is the most environmentally friendly fuel and can be efficiently used for stationary power and mobile applications. When burned or oxidized, it generates water as the only emission (small amounts of NOx are generated during the combustion process but can be controlled to very low levels). At present, hydrogen is produced almost entirely from fossil fuels such as natural gas, naphtha, a...

Plant metabolism represents an enormous repository of compounds that are of pharmaceutical and biotechnological importance. Engineering plant metabolism into microbes will provide sustainable solutions to produce pharmaceutical and fuel molecules that could one day replace substantial portions of the current fossil-fuel based economy. Metabolic engineering entails targeted manipulation of biosy...

This work analyses the configuration and operation principles of hybrid wind-hydro power plants with pumped storage integrated into autonomous electric grid systems, in order to support high wind energy penetration. The plant consists of wind generation units, combined with a pumped-hydro storage system. It operates on a daily basis, storing the surplus wind production by pumping water in an el...