Feasibility Limits for a Hybrid System with Ocean Wave and Ocean Current Power Plants in Southern Coast of Brazil

Some types of renewable energy have been experiencing rapid evolution in recent decades, notably among the energies associated with the oceans, such as wave and current energies. The development of new energy conversion technologies for these two forms of energy has been offering a large number of equipment configurations and plant geometries for energy conversion. This process can be implemented aiming at the result of feasibility studies in places with energy potentials, establishing minimum feasibility limits to be reached. This work aims to contribute in this sense with a feasibility study of a system with ocean wave power plants and with socio-current power plants to be operated on the southern coast of Brazil. This study evaluates a hybrid system with contributions from energy supplies obtained from wave plants and current plants, connected to the grid and supplying the demand of the municipalities in the North Coast region of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil. The study was carried out with simulations with the Homer Legacy software, with some adaptations for the simulation of ocean wave plants and ocean current plants. The results indicate that the ocean wave power plants were viable in the vast majority of simulated scenarios, while the ocean current power plants were viable in the scenarios with more intense average ocean current speeds and with more expensive energy acquired from the interconnected system.

Current Situation and Prospect of Pumped-Storage Hydropower Plant in China

With the rapid development of national economy in China, pumped-storage power plant(PSPP) has developed very fast for its special stable and dynamic benefits in recent years.Because of the ever-increasing power load and its peak-to-valley ratio, customers have higherexpectation for the securityand quality ofpower supply. PSPPs are playing a role in load regulation,energy saving and reliable operation of power girds with its unique peak-shifting character.

Biomass pyrolysis: A review of the process development and challenges from initial researches up to the commercialisation stage

Lignocellulosic biomass can be convert to a condensable liquid named bio-oil,a solid product named as char and a mixture of gaseous products comprising CO2,CO,H2,CH4,etc.In recent years,much effort has been made on the investigation of conversion of biomass through pyrolysis.However,commercialisation of the biomass pyrolysis technology is still challenging due to various issues such as the deleterious properties of bio-oil including the low heating value and the high instability at elevated temperatures.To overcome such issues,many processes,reactors and catalysts have been developed for pyrolysis and catalytic pyrolysis of biomass.A state to the art of pyrolysis or catalytic pyrolysis of biomass need to be summarised to have an overall evaluation of the technologies,in order to provide a useful reference for the further development of pyrolysis technology.This study reviews the various pyrolysis process,especially focus on the effects of essential parameters,the process design,the reactors and the catalysts on the pyrolysis process.In addition,progress in commercialisation of pyrolysis technology was also reviewed and the remaining issues in the process of commercialisation were discussed.