• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Resources Recycling Conference
• /
• 2005.10a
• /
• pp.47-58
• /
• 2005

Rice straw is one of the main renewable energy sources in Korea, and bio-oil is produced from rice straw with a lab. scale plant equipped mainly with a fluidized bed and a char removal system. We investigated how the reaction temperature affected the production of bio-oil and the efficiency of a char removal system. To elucidate how the temperature depended on the production of bio-oil, experiment were conducted between $450^{\circ}C\;and\;600^{\circ}C$ with a feed rate of about 300g/h. The mass balance was established in each experiment, and the produced gas and oil were analyzed with the aid of GCs and a GC-MS system. The char removal system is composed of a cyclone and a hot filter. In the experiments, we observed that the optimum reaction temperature range for the production of bio-oil is between $450^{\circ}C\;and\;500^{\circ}C$.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
• /
• v.33 no.3
• /
• pp.172-186
• /
• 2017

The effects of application of fuel-reduction treatment in wildfire management has not been tested in dry forests of Ghana. Therefore, the short-term ecological effects of prescribed burning and hand thinning treatments followed by experimental wildfire were investigated in degraded forests and Tectona grandis forest plantations in two forest reserves of different levels of dryness in Ghana. The results showed that more trees were killed in prescribed burning (average of 41% in degraded forest and 18% in plantations) than hand thinning (7.2% in degraded forests and 8% in plantation). More tree seedlings were also killed in prescribed burning (72%) than hand thinning (47%). The mortality of trees and seedlings were greater in Worobong South forest, a less dry forest reserve than the Afram Headwaters forest, a drier forest reserve. Fuel treatment especially prescribed burning compared to the control reduced wildfire effects on forest canopy particularly in the less dry forest and tree mortality especially in the drier forest. Prescribed burning temporarily increased pH, exchangeable potassium (52%) and available phosphorus (82%) in the surface soils of the entire plots. The two fuel treatment methods did not have much influence on basal area, organic matter and total nitrogen. Nevertheless, they were able to reduce the adverse wildfire effects on soil pH, exchangeable potassium, available phosphorus, organic matter and total nitrogen concentrations. Fuel treatments therefore have potential application in dry forest management in Ghana due to their ability to retain important forest ecological traits after a wildfire incidence.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
• /
• v.65 no.4
• /
• pp.555-560
• /
• 2016

Recently, many countries have placed great attention on energy security and climate changes. Governments are promoting the construction of renewable energy projects with regulatory support in Korea. Despite an increasing penetration of renewable resources, however, the photovoltaic and wind power are underutilized due to the endemic problems such as difficulties of output control and intermittent output. The Energy Storage System (ESS) is proposed as a good solution for solving the problems and has been studied in both the private business and the government. However, because of inefficient aspects, the research has been carried out for improving high costs and a small capacity. In addition, the ESS is currently installed for using only one purpose which is frequency regulation or transmission congestion relief such that has an economic limitation. Therefore, methods which are becoming economically justifiable to increase the penetration of the ESS is required. Thus, this paper presents in terms of operation efficiency to improve economic feasibility of the ESS currently used. mainly, there are two aspects for the operation efficiency. Firstly, it is intended to improve the utilization rate through a process that can utilize the ESS for various purposes. It is necessary to be able to use for other purposes by classifying and clustering for increasing the efficiency of availability. The clustering method is proposed to conduct the grouping the ESS. Especially, it is proposed to utilize ESS for frequency regulation service which is the one of ancillary services in the power system. Through case studies, it is confirmed to secure the necessary resources by clustering small size ESS.

• Clean Technology
• /
• v.17 no.3
• /
• pp.191-200
• /
• 2011

Natural polymers, biopolymers, and synthetic polymers based on renewable resources are the basis for the 21th portfolio of sustainable and eco-friendly plastics but high-volume consumable plastics continue to be dominated by nondegradable petroleum-based materials. Three factors have recently made biodegradable polymers economically attractive: (i) rising costs of petroleum production resulting from the depletion of the most easily accessible reserves, (ii) environmental and economic concerns associated with waste plastics, and (iii) emissions of carbon dioxide from preparation of petroleum-based materials. These pressures have driven commercial applications based on biodegradable polymers which are related to reduction of carbon dioxide in processing, such poly(hydroxy alkanoate) and poly (lactide). Since initial degradation of these polymers leads to catastrophic mechanical failure, it is necessary to control the rate of initial degradation for commercial applications. In this article, we have a critic review on the recent progress of polymer modification for the control of degradation.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
• /
• v.65 no.2
• /
• pp.239-246
• /
• 2016

In recent years, the power demand has been increasing steadily and the occurrence of maximum power demand has been moving from the summer season to the winter season in Korea. And since the control of electric power supply and demand is more important under those situations, a micro-grid system began to emerge as a keyword for the sTable operation of electric power system. A micro-gird power system is composed of various kinds of distributed generators(DG) such as small diesel generator, wind turbine, photo-voltaic generator and energy storage system(ESS). This paper introduces a method to determine the optimal capacities of the distributed generators which are installed in a stand-alone type of microgrid power system based on the fundamental proportion of diesel generator. At first, the fundamental proportion of diesel generator will be determined by changing from 0 to 50 percent. And then we will optimize the capacities of renewable energy resources and ESS according to load patterns. Lastly, after recalculating the capacity of ESS with consideration for SOC constraints, the optimal capacities of distributed generators will be decided.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
• /
• v.36 no.1
• /
• pp.11-18
• /
• 2016

The local wind systems in the Pohang region were categorized into wind sectors. Still, thorough knowledge of wind resource assessment, wind environment analysis, and atmospheric environmental impact assessment was required since the region has outstanding wind resources, it is located on the path of typhoon, and it has large-scale atmospheric pollution sources. To overcome the resolution limitation of meteorological dataset and problems of categorization criteria of the preceding studies, the high-resolution wind resource map of the Korea Institute of Energy Research was used as time-series meteorological data; the 2-step method of determining the clustering coefficient through hierarchical clustering analysis and subsequently categorizing the wind sectors through non-hierarchical K-means clustering analysis was adopted. The similarity of normalized time-series wind vector was proposed as the Euclidean distance. The meteor-statistical characteristics of the mean vector wind distribution and meteorological variables of each wind sector were compared. The comparison confirmed significant differences among wind sectors according to the terrain elevation, mean wind speed, Weibull shape parameter, etc.

• New & Renewable Energy
• /
• v.18 no.3
• /
• pp.1-9
• /
• 2022

This study analyzed the anticipated supply-and-demand of forest biomass energy (through wood pellets) until 2050, in South Korea. Comparing the utilization rates of forest resources of five countries (United Kingdom, Germany, Finland, Japan, and S. Korea), it was found that S. Korea does not nearly utilize its forest resources for energy purposes. The total demand for wood pellets in S. Korea (based on a power generation efficiency of 38%) was predicted to be 3,629 and 4,371 thousand tons in 2034 and 2050, respectively. The anticipated total wood pellet power generation ratio to target power consumption is 1.13% (5,745 GWh), 1.17% (6,336 GWh), and 1.25% (7,631 GWh) in 2020, 2030, and 2050, respectively. Low value-added forest residues left unattended in forests are called "Unused Forest Biomass" in S. Korea. From the analysis, the total annual potential amount of raw material, sustainably collectible amount, and available amount of wood pellet in 2050 were estimated to be 6,877, 4,814, and 3,370 thousand tons, respectively. The rate of contribution to Nationally Determined Contributions was up to 0.64%. Through this study, the authors found that forest biomass energy will contribute to a carbon neutral society in the near future at the national level.

• New & Renewable Energy
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.70-78
• /
• 2022

To respond to global warming, there is an increasing interest in eco-friendly alternative energy sources. Therefore, unused forest biomass that has been neglected due to a lack of marketability is attracting attention. With the introduction of the "unused forest biomass certification system" in 2019, ways of determining quantity of unused forest biomass have steadily increased. However, there have been reported cases whereby unused forest biomass weighed more than the amount of harvested trees. It was found that it was possible that forest resources that can be used as round wood were mixed with unused forest biomass. In this context, this study aimed to estimate the amount of mixed round wood in the unused forest biomass supply. The relative expression of growing stock/ha versus the amount of final clearing/ha collected was modeled (y=1.490x-94.341, R²=0.861). As a result, it was found that round wood was mixed into the unused forest biomass, contributing to the disparity observed between the weighted forest biomass and the amount of trees harvested. In conclusion, proper declaration and certification procedures should be carried out for the use of forest resources and promoting unused forest biomass usage.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
• /
• v.33 no.3
• /
• pp.403-411
• /
• 2023

The possibility of utilizing radiant solar energy as a renewable energy resource in Tajikistan was investigated by assessing solar irradiance using XGBoost algorithm. Through training, validation, and testing, the seasonality of solar irradiance was clear in both actual and predicted values. Calculation of hourly values of solar irradiance on 1 July 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 indicated maximum actual and predicted values of 1,005 and 1,009 W/m², 939 and 997 W/m², 1,022 and 1,012 W/m², 1,055 and 1,019 W/m², respectively, with actual and predicted values being within 0.4~5.8%. XGBoost is thus a useful tool in predicting solar irradiance in Tajikistan and evaluating the possibility of utilizing radiant solar energy.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2007.05b
• /
• pp.2839-2844
• /
• 2007

Micro hydraulic power generation of which the output is less or equal to a 100kW is attracting considerable attention. This is because of its small, simple, renewable, and abundant energy resources. By using a small hydropower generator of which main concept is based on using the different water pressure levels in pipe lines, energy which was initially wasted by use of a reducing valve at the end of the pipeline, is collected by turbine in the hydropower generator. A propeller shaped hydroturbine has been used in order to use this renewable pressure energy. In this study, in order to acquire basic design data of tubular type hydraulic turbine, output power, head, efficiency characteristics due to the flow coefficient are examined in detail. Moreover influences of pressure and velocity distributions with the variations of runner vane angle on turbine performance are investigated by using a commercial CFD code.