Electric water heaters have the ability to store energy in their water buffer without impacting the comfort of the end user. This feature makes them a prime candidate for residential demand response. However, the stochastic and nonlinear dynamics of electric water heaters, makes it challenging to harness their flexibility. Driven by this challenge, this paper formulates the underlying sequentia...

Controlling organic carbon levels in municipal water has been hypothesized to limit downstream growth of bacteria and opportunistic pathogens in premise plumbing (OPPPs). Here, the relationships between influent organic carbon (0-15,000 µg ozonated fulvic acid /L) and the number of total bacteria [16S rRNA genes and heterotrophic plate counts (HPCs)] and a wide range of OPPPs (gene copy numbers...

This paper proposes and analyses a new demand response technique for renewable energy regulation using smart hot water heaters that forecast water consumption at an individual dwelling level. Distributed thermal energy storage has many advantages, including high overall efficiency, use of existing infrastructure and a distributed nature. In addition, the use of a smart thermostatic controller e...

The determinations of heat collection rate and heat loss coefficient are crucial for the evaluation of in service water-in-glass evacuated tube solar water heaters. However, the direct determination requires complex detection devices and a series of standard experiments, which also wastes too much time and manpower. To address this problem, we propose machine learning models including artificia...

Monodisperse multifunctional MnFe2O4/dye/silica core/shell nanoparticles have been designed and developed. The magnetic cores act as nano-heaters in biological systems under RF field excitation and the encapsulated dyes work as local temperature probes. The silica shells enable the water-solubility and biocompatibility of the NPs and protect the encapsulated fluorophores from photobleaching.

One of the biggest obstacles to economic profitability of solar water heating systems is the investment cost. Retrofitting existing domestic hot water heaters when a new solar hot water system is installed can reduce both the installation and material costs. In this study, retrofitting existing water heaters for solar water heating systems in Swedish single-family houses was theoretically inves...

Solar water heaters are good tools for saving fuel. The main component of these water heaters is collectors, which are responsible for absorbing solar energy and transferring it to the working fluid with the least heat dissipation. The present study is an experimental study of the performance of the solar semispherical collector with 1 m2 of absorber area at different volumetric flow...