Comparison of Small Modular Reactor and Large Nuclear Reactor Fuel Cost

Small modular reactors (SMRs) offer simple, standardized, and safe modular designs for new nuclear reactor construction. They are factory built, requiring smaller initial capital investment and facilitating shorter construction times. SMRs also promise competitive economy when compared with the current reactor fleet. Construction cost of a majority of the projects, which are mostly in their design stages, is not publicly available, but variable costs can be determined from fuel enrichment, average burn-up, and plant thermal efficiency, which are public parameters for many near-term SMR projects. The fuel cost of electricity generation for selected SMRs and large reactors is simulated, including calculation of optimal tails assay in the uranium enrichment process. The results are compared between one another and with current generation large reactor designs providing a rough comparison of the long-term economics of a new nuclear reactor project. SMRs are predicted to have higher fuel costs than large reactors. Particularly, integral pressurized water reactors (iPWRs) are shown to have from 15% to 70% higher fuel costs than large light water reactors using 2014 nuclear fuels market data. Fuel cost sensitivities to reactor design parameters are presented.

Realization and Analysis of Good Fuel Economy and Kinetic Performance of a Low-cost Hybrid Electric Vehicle

By using high-power and high-efficiency propulsion systems,current hybrid electric vehicles(HEVs) in market can achieve excellent fuel economy and kinetic performance.However,it is the cost of current HEVs that hinders HEVs coming into widespread use.A novel hybrid electric propulsion system is designed to balance HEV cost and performance for developing markets.A battery/supercapacitor-based hybrid energy storage system(HESS) is used to improve energy conversion efficiency and reduce battery size and cost.An all-in-one-controller(AIOC) which integrates engine electronic control unit(ECU),motor ECU,and HESS management system is developed to save materials and energy,and reduce the influence of distribution parameters on circuit.As for the powertrain configuration,four schemes are presented:belt-driven starter generator(BSG) scheme,four-wheel drive HEV scheme,full HEV scheme,and ranger-extender electric vehicle(EV) scheme.Component selection and parameter matching for the propulsion system are performed,and an energy management strategy is developed based on powertrain configuration and selected components.Forward-facing simulation models are built,comprehending the control strategy based on the optimal engine torque for the low-cost hybrid electric propulsion system.Co-simulation of AVL CRUISE and Matlab/Simulink is presented and the best scheme is selected.The simulation results indicate that,for the best design,fuel consumption in urban driving condition is 4.11 L/(100 km) and 0-50 km/h accelerating time is 10.95 s.The proposed research can realize low-cost concept for HEV while achieving satisfactory fuel economy and kinetic performance,and help to improve commercialization of HEVs.

The Two-Constant Cost Model and the Estimation of the Cost Performance Evolutions of the Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Power Generation

This paper aims at formulization and overview of the cost performance evolutions of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell power generation along with load and time. For this purpose, electricity-cost ratio (ECR) is proposed as the measuring parameter for the cost performance and a two-constant cost model is proposed to concisely describe the cost characteristic of the power generation as the opposite of a multi-constant cost model. Combination of the two-constant cost model and the ideal cell model developed recently produces an inclusive ECR equation that has three analytical expressions and thus allows of straight overviews of the cost performance evolutions in the working zones of the cells. The applications to real cells confirm the validity of the equation for operation optimization and technique evaluation of PEM fuel cells. And more insights into the cost performance evolutions are inferred by means of the equation to help promote the commercialization of PEM fuel cells.

Discrimination and Estimation of the Maximum Cost Performance of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Power Generation with Seven Constants

This paper is dedicated to analytical expression of the maximum electricity-cost ratio (M-ECR) point of the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell power generation as the function of cell constants and cost constants. That is to formulize the maximum cost performance (MCP) magnitude and the optimal final operating (OFO) location in the working zone based on the five-constant ideal cell model and the two-constant cost model. The issues are well resolved by introducing the concepts of economic voltage and cost factor and describing the movement of the M-ECR point with cost factor. According to mathematical derivations, the movement can be described in the form of MCP and OFO curves. The derivations lead to a complete set of discriminants and criteria of the M-ECR point of PEM fuel cells that theoretically cover all of cell specialties and all of cost specialties. The discriminants and criteria may act as a general tool for the operation optimization of a diversity of PEM fuel cells and the economic viability estimation of the power generation.

乏燃料干法和水法后处理设施经济性分析

核燃料循环是影响核电经济评价的重要因素,是推进核能发展的关键问题。乏燃料后处理作为核燃料循环后段的重要组成部分,其经济成本会影响整体的核燃料循环成本。为对核燃料循环尤其是后段循环成本的分析提供更准确参考,本文调研了国外干法和水法后处理设施的经济性数据,并结合对快堆乏燃料后处理设施的经济性研究,进行了热堆和快堆乏燃料的干法和水法后处理成本的分析,给出了各设施的后处理成本数据。

固体氧化物电解池的发展及研究现状

固体氧化物电解池(SOEC)可以高效、清洁地与可再生能源进行耦合并将其转化为化学能,是一种高效、环保的能量转化装置,但是存在长期运行性能衰减问题,这个问题也是固体氧化物电解水制氢实现大规模商业化的关键所在。本文简要介绍了SOEC的发展历程、类别及其组成和运行原理;详细阐述了该项技术的优、缺点及运行成本;重点对SOEC性能衰减的因素进行了分析,SOEC的组成、运行模式、连接板材料及运行条件等是造成性能衰减的主要因素;最后通过论文和专利数量分析了固体氧化物电解池的研究现状和未来发展趋势,认为虽然固体氧化物燃料电池(SOFC)发展较为成熟,但迫于目前环境需求,为了充分利用清洁能源,降低碳排放,SOEC制氢技术的大规模商业化必然是未来行业的发展方向,目前SOEC性能的稳定及低成本制备是该技术发展面临的主要问题。

Airlines Cost Control in China:An Overlooked Perspective

With the deepening of economic globalization,the business environment has seen profound changes.The cost of aviation fuel has grown to represent a significant portion of air transportation costs for“energy-dependent”airlines.The cost of aviation fuel makes up a sizeable amount of Chinese airlines’cost structure and is increasingly limiting their profitability.The question of how to control the cost of aviation fuel from various perspectives has garnered widespread attention.This paper puts forward an overlooked perspective-the procurement strategy.Firstly,it describes the necessity of aviation fuel cost control,and then analyzes specific cases of aviation fuel procurement cost control.Finally,it proposes several effective suggestions from the perspective of aviation fuel procurement,aiming to improve the refined management of Chinese airlines’aviation fuel procurement.

复混生物质有机朗肯循环系统的热力性能与成本分析

随着全球变暖的日益加剧,减少温室气体的排放越来越受到社会的广泛关注,其中畜牧业畜禽粪污染物是主要来源之一。为了更加清洁有效地处理畜禽粪,利用植物与畜禽粪进行混合的生物质燃料进行燃烧发电,在减少温室气体排放的同时,将其热值进行二次利用发电。在不同蒸发温度下分别设计了以环己烷为有机工质的有机朗肯循环锅炉蒸发面积,并结合热力性能与成本得到最优工作区间。同时,通过对4种复混生物质燃料进行计算,得到不同热值的燃料对粪便处理速度的影响。研究表明,系统的输出功率和效率随蒸发温度的升高而升高,并且最优的蒸发温度区间为250~260℃。在燃料选择方面,在锅炉额定热功率一定的情况下,选择果树残枝与动物粪便混合制成的复混生物质燃料的性价比更高。

氢燃料电池高性能催化剂研究进展

氢燃料电池是高效、清洁的能源利用转化装置,目前,氢燃料电池使用的催化剂多是碳载铂催化剂或碳载铂基合金催化剂。这类催化剂的价格较高,在使用过程中,催化氧还原反应的活性逐渐衰减,因此必须寻找活性更高、稳定性更强的低铂催化剂。本文结合氢燃料电池中常见的氧还原反应催化剂,综述铂基催化剂制备方法的研究进展,指出铂基催化剂实现低成本与高性能的重点技术问题,以期为研发与制备氢燃料电池的高性能低成本催化剂提供新思路。

Techno-Economic Challenges of Fuel Cell Commercialization

随着资源稀缺、气候变化加剧以及污染程度上升等问题的凸显,经济增长需要依赖更加环保、高效的生产过程。燃料电池具有高效和环保的特点,是内燃机和锅炉的理想替代品,也是通向绿色工业的途径。然而,作为一种新的能源技术,燃料电池的市场渗透率仍然不高。本文通过研究生命周期和价值链活动,对燃料电池系统进行了技术经济和环境方面的分析。首先,我们研究了燃料电池的发展进程,根据其生命周期活动、价值链活动以及最终用户验收标准确定了下一阶段需要采取的行动。然后,我们统一了解了燃料电池商业化的制度障碍。最终用户的主要验收标准是功能、价格和可靠性,比起其他同类产品,如内燃机和电池,燃料电池需要在这些标准上有所提升,以凸显其竞争优势。燃料电池的维修和保养费用可能会使成本大幅增加并减小可用性(由于可靠性较低),而成本和可用性是最终用户能否接受的主要因素。因此,为了克服可靠性的障碍,燃料电池产业面临着巨大的挑战。本文深入洞察了过去几年燃料电池商业化面临的主要障碍,讨论了燃料电池在未来绿色低碳经济中的潜在关键作用。文中还提出了未来低碳经济的必要性,并指出了相关的研究方向。以燃料电池为配置的绿色能源可以真正作为未来的商业模式。通过采取绿色公众投资、实行政策举措,为经济增长提供一条更加持续的发展道路,鼓励更多的环保产业投资。

Study of visualized simulation and analysis of nuclear fuel cycle system based on multilevel flow model

Complex energy and environment system, especially nuclear fuel cycle system recently raised socialconcerns about the issues of economic competitiveness, environmental effect and nuclear proliferation. Only underthe condition that those conflicting issues are gotten a consensus between stakeholders with different knowledgebackground, can nuclear power industry be continuingly developed. In this paper, a new analysis platform has beendeveloped to help stakeholders to recognize and analyze various socio-technical issues in the nuclear fuel cycle systembased on the functional modeling method named Multilevel Flow Models (MFM) according to the cognition theoryof human being. Its character is that MFM models define a set of mass, energy and information flow structures onmultiple levels of abstraction to describe the functional structure of a process system and its graphical symbol representationand the means-end and part-whole hierarchical flow structure to make the represented process easy to beunderstood. Based upon this methodology, a micro-process and a macro-process of nuclear fuel cycle system wereselected to be simulated and some analysis processes such as economics analysis, environmental analysis and energybalance analysis related to those flows were also integrated to help stakeholders to understand the process of decision-making with the introduction of some new functions for the improved Multilevel Flow Models Studio, and finallythe simple simulation such as spent fuel management process simulation and money flow of nuclear fuel cycleand its levelised cost analysis will be represented as feasible examples.

Study on the Agricultural Fuel Consumption Subsidy Policy for Wheat Straw Low Stubble——Taking the Investigation of Wheat Combine Harvester as an Example in Xushui District of Hebei Province

With the improvement of agricultural mechanization equipment levels, the mechanized wheat harvesting level has been above 80% and the rate of wheat straw returned has increased significantly in the main wheat production of wheat of northern countryside in China. Chinese government popularized the beneficial agronomic measures in the process of wheat straw returned field by mechanization. The agronomic measure was reducing the wheat straw stubble height(WSSH) not more than 20 cm.However, local government didn't apply and disseminate the measure, because in practice the cost of fuel consumption was high, and the operation time of harvesting was longer than ever. The machinery operators and farmers needed to support extra fuel cost and time if they took government's advice. In fact, the objective subsidy policy of fuel cost on reducing WSSH was not been formulated by all levels of government. Therefore, the set of agronomic measure couldn't be popularized in main wheat production area of North China. Our research addressed to master the changing feature of fuel cost and mechanical efficiency,seeking suitable subsidy standard, providing some useful and constructive suggestions to improve subsidy policy of fuel consumption cost for national government department. The study carried out the tracking experiments of the operation efficiency and fuel costs of farm harvester in the situation of different WSSH in 2010 in Xushui District of Hebei Province. In conclusion, the operation time of harvesting decline and machinery fuel consumption cost increased along with the decreasing of WSSH. First for the older harvester, the operation efficiency would decline by 18.7% when the WSSH changed from 20 cm to 10 cm, the cost would increase 4.7%, exact cost was 152.2CNY per hectare. For the new harvester, the operation efficiency would decline by 39.9% when the WSSH changed from 20 cm to 15 cm, the cost would increase 4.6%, exact cost was 368.4CNY per hectare. We provided about 375 CNY per hectare to the mechanical operators and farmer who attended this project, and they were willing to accept the subsidies. We also put forwards some policy suggestions on promoting agronomic measures of reducing WSSH including strengthen the construction of agricultural machinery service system, practise a special fuel consumption subsidies of agricultural machinery and open up new paths for combine sales and circulation.

Vehicle routing problem for save fuel consumption

This study has extended a vehicle routing problem,by considering economy of fuel,and constructing a LF-VRP model,to obtain optimal fixed costs.Our objective was to minimize not only distance,but also the fuel consumption.A example were developed to solve the proposed models.It was found that our proposed models yielded better results than the traditional VRP models.

Removal of Hexavalent Chromium from Aqueous Solution by Adsorption on Palm Oil Fuel Ash (POFA)

This study investigated the removal of hexavalent chromium, Cr(VI) from aqueous solution by adsorption using palm oil fuel ash (POFA), an agricultural waste from the palm oil industry. POFA adsorbent was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. Batch adsorption study revealed that the optimum conditions for the removal were as follows: pH 2, adsorbent dosage 80 g/L and contact time of 6 min, which resulted in 92% removal and 0.464 mg/g maximum adsorption capacity. Adsorption isotherm and kinetic studies showed that Freundlich isotherm and pseudo-second-order kinetic models fitted best to the experimental data. Column adsorption study at 5 mL/min of flow rate showed that 90% removal was obtained at 2 min of contact time which represented its breakthrough point. The column reached saturation at 30 min and the maximum column adsorption capacity recorded was 0.412 mg/g. The column adsorption behavior showed good fit with both Thomas and Yoon-Nelson kinetic models. These findings suggested that the utilization of POFA as a low-cost adsorbent to remove Cr(VI) from wastewater, either in batch or fixed bed adsorption system is not only effective, but concurrently will help to reduce wastes from the palm oil industry.

Modeling of Combined Economic and Emission Dispatch Using Improved Sand Cat Optimization Algorithm

Combined Economic and Emission Dispatch(CEED)task forms multi-objective optimization problems to be resolved to minimize emission and fuel costs.The disadvantage of the conventional method is its incapability to avoid falling in local optimal,particularly when handling nonlinear and complex systems.Metaheuristics have recently received considerable attention due to their enhanced capacity to prevent local optimal solutions in addressing all the optimization problems as a black box.Therefore,this paper focuses on the design of an improved sand cat optimization algorithm based CEED(ISCOA-CEED)technique.The ISCOA-CEED technique majorly concen-trates on reducing fuel costs and the emission of generation units.Moreover,the presented ISCOA-CEED technique transforms the equality constraints of the CEED issue into inequality constraints.Besides,the improved sand cat optimization algorithm(ISCOA)is derived from the integration of tra-ditional SCOA with the Levy Flight(LF)concept.At last,the ISCOA-CEED technique is applied to solve a series of 6 and 11 generators in the CEED issue.The experimental validation of the ISCOA-CEED technique ensured the enhanced performance of the presented ISCOA-CEED technique over other recent approaches.

Combined Economic and Emission Power Dispatch Control Using Substantial Augmented Transformative Algorithm

The purpose of the Combined Economic Emission Dispatch(CEED)of electric power is to offer the most exceptional schedule for production units,which must run with both low fuel costs and emission levels concurrently,thereby meeting the lack of system equality and inequality constraints.Economic and emissions dispatching has become a primary and significant concern in power system networks.Consequences of using non-renewable fuels as input to exhaust power systems with toxic gas emissions and depleted resources for future generations.The optimal power allocation to generators serves as a solution to this problem.Emission dispatch reduces emissions while ignoring economic considerations.A collective strategy known as Combined Economic and Emission Dispatch is utilized to resolve the above-mentioned problems and investigate the trade-off relationship between fuel cost and emissions.Consequently,this work manages the Substantial Augmented Transformative Algorithm(SATA)to take care of the Combined Economic Emission Dispatch Problem(CEEDP)of warm units while fulfilling imperatives,for example,confines on generator limit,diminish the fuel cost,lessen the emission and decrease the force misfortune.SATA is a stochastic streamlining process that relies upon the development and knowledge of swarms.The goal is to minimize the total fuel cost of fossil-based thermal power generation units that generate and cause environmental pollution.The algorithm searches for solutions in the search space from the smallest to the largest in the case of forwarding search.The simulation of the proposed system is developed using MATLAB Simulink software.Simulation results show the effectiveness and practicability of this method in terms of economic and emission dispatching issues.The performance of the proposed system is compared with existing Artificial Bee Colony-Particle Swarm Optimization(ABC-PSO),Simulated Annealing(SA),and Differential Evolution(DE)methods.The fuel cost and gas emission of the proposed system are 128904$/hr and 138094.4652$/hr.

A Visual Integrated Analysis Platform for Nuclear Fuel Cycle System Based on Multilevel Flow Model

Complex Nuclear Fuel Cycle (NFC) system faces many socio-technical issues that need to obtain the consensus between stakeholders of different knowledge background. In this paper, a visualized analysis platform based on graphical functional modeling method, Multilevel Flow Model (MFM), is proposed to help those stakeholders to recognize and analyze various socio-technical issues in NFC system. Some new functions, such as “Reaction Function", “Switch Function" and “Conversion Function", are introduced to fulfill new simulation tasks for NFC system. Based upon this methodology, a micro-process and a macro-process of NFC system are simulated and meanwhile some key analysis variables, such as CO2 emission and cost flow, required by some analysis methods are deducted and displayed in the platform. And finally a sample simulation analysis is conducted based on MFM.

Economic Dispatch with Multiple Fuel Options Using CCF

This paper presents an efficient analytical approach using Composite Cost Function (CCF) for solving the Economic Dispatch problem with Multiple Fuel Options (EDMFO). The solution methodology comprises two stages. Firstly, the CCF of the plant is developed and the most economical fuel of each set can be easily identified for any load demand. In the next stage, for the selected fuels, CCF is evaluated and the optimal scheduling is obtained. The Proposed Method (PM) has been tested on the standard ten-generation set system;each set consists of two or three fuel options. The total fuel cost obtained by the PM is compared with earlier reports in order to validate its effectiveness. The comparison clears that this approach is a promising alterna-tive for solving EDMFO problems in practical power system.

循环流化床锅炉燃料掺烧技术的标准化

降低燃料成本的需求催生了循环流化床锅炉的燃料掺烧技术。作为拓展运行边界的技术活动,燃料掺烧应遵循“先控制风险,再追求收益”的技术原则。从具体燃料与现有设备的匹配程度入手,开展燃料特性检测、锅炉热力性能校核和系统适应性评估等现状调研工作,有助于全面评估和有效控制掺烧带来的风险;在设计燃料组合、选择掺配方式和优化掺烧比例等环节进行改进,则有助于提高实炉试验效率、降低试错成本。燃料掺烧的经济性最终体现在相关收益扣除成本后的结余最大化。