Bifacial solar cells are receiving increased attention in the PV market due to their higher energy yield compared to conventional monofacial modules thanks to additional light conversion through their back surface. This additional rear side energy gain creates a potential for significant reduction of the overall levelized cost of energy (LCOE). Despite this fact, wide deployment of bifacial PV modules is very limited because of the high unpredictability of their power output due to various factors such as ground reflectance, module elevation angle, orientation and tilt angle. Due to this complexity, modelling of bifacial modules and systems is currently not developed at the same level of maturity as monofacial ones, where established commercial tools have been developed for PV system designers. In this regard, a customized 2D device model has been developed to simulate bifacial PV structures based on the numerical solution of the transport equations by the finite element method. The model was used to simulate actual PV performance and energy yield based on measured outdoor environmental parameters including solar radiation spectrum and temperature. Bifacial device output was also compared with a monofacial one based on the industrial standard Al-BSF structure. Simulated results were also compared and validated with outdoor experimental data based on IV measurements of monofacial and bifacial modules installed at various tilt angles at a location near the Western coast of Saudi Arabia.

Defect sites are often proposed as key active sites in the design of catalysts. A promising strategy for improving activity is to achieve a high density of homogeneously dispersed atomic defects; however, this is seldom accomplished in metals. We hypothesize that vacancy-rich catalysts could be obtained through the synthesis of quantum dots (QDs) and their electrochemical reduction during the CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR). Here, we report that QD-derived catalysts (QDDCs) with up to 20 vol % vacancies achieve record current densities of 16, 19, and 25 mAcm−2 with high faradic efficiencies in the electrosynthesis of formate, carbon monoxide, and ethylene at low potentials of –0.2, –0.3, and –0.9 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), respectively. The materials are stable after 80 hr of CO2RR. These CO2RR performances in aqueous solution surpass those of previously reported catalysts by 2×. Together, X-ray absorption spectroscopy and computational studies reveal that the vacancies produce a local atomic and electronic structure that enhances CO2RR.

A vital component of spiral-wound membrane modules is the spacer mesh. It not only structurally supports the membranes but also aids in mass-transport enhancement through the membrane surface. Fundamental understanding of hydrodynamics associated with these spacer designs is critical to improve the permeate flux performance by decreasing concentration polarization and minimizing (bio)fouling, as well as minimizing the axial pressure drop. In the present study, time and space resolved Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) were performed for a commercial spacer geometry. The spacer geometry was reconstructed by measurements using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Computations were performed for three spacer cells, allowing elimination of stream-wise periodicity that was a major bottleneck in earlier studies. The numerical solver was well checked in terms of boundary layer profiles obtained from Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) data and with pressure measurements corresponding to various flow channel velocities. Non-dimensional computations were performed for Reynolds Numbers (Re) ranging from 73 to 375 (inlet channel velocity of 0.073–0.375 m/s) covering the flow transition dynamics regime. Results indicate that flow transition from steady to unsteady regime occurs for Re > 250. The flow transition could be primarily attributed to the interaction between vortices attached to the spacer filaments and the screw-vortex that originates along the diagonal of the spacer cells. No turbulent transition was observed even at the highest investigated velocity (Re = 375). The frequency spectra of time-varying velocity signal shows that at Re > 350 a sudden shift of frequency spectra occurs from discrete to continuous mode indicating the onset of advanced instability. Spacer design criteria in terms of maximum principal stress is also proposed, which can potentially aid in minimizing biofilm seeding.

Turbulence statistics from two three-dimensional direct numerical simulations of planar n-heptane/air turbulent jets are compared to assess the effect of the gas-phase species diffusion model on flame dynamics and soot formation. The Reynolds number based on the initial jet width and velocity is around 15, 000, corresponding to a Taylor scale Reynolds number in the range 100 ≤ Reλ ≤ 150. In one simulation, multicomponent transport based on a mixture-averaged approach is employed, while in the other the gas-phase species Lewis numbers are set equal to unity. The statistics of temperature and major species obtained with the mixture-averaged formulation are very similar to those in the unity Lewis number case. In both cases, the statistics of temperature are captured with remarkable accuracy by a laminar flamelet model with unity Lewis numbers. On the contrary, a flamelet with a mixture-averaged diffusion model, which corresponds to the model used in the multi-component diffusion three-dimensional DNS, produces significant differences with respect to the DNS results. The total mass of soot precursors decreases by 20-30% with the unity Lewis number approximation, and their distribution is more homogeneous in space and time. Due to the non-linearity of the soot growth rate with respect to the precursors' concentration, the soot mass yield decreases by a factor of two. Being strongly affected by coagulation, soot number density is not altered significantly if the unity Lewis number model is used rather than the mixture-averaged diffusion. The dominant role of turbulent transport over differential diffusion effects is expected to become more pronounced for higher Reynolds numbers. © 2016 The Combustion Institute.

We have investigated, at the density functional theory level, the geometric and electronic structures of the pentamethyliridocene (IrCpCp*) monomer and dimer adsorbed on the Au(111) and indium tin oxide (ITO) (222) surfaces, as well as their impact on the work functions. Our calculations show that the adsorption of a monomer lowers the work function of ITO(222) by 1.2 eV and Au(111) by 1.2–1.3 eV. The main origin for this reduction is the formation of an interface dipole between the monomer and the substrate via charge transfer. Dimer adsorption as well as adsorption of possible byproducts formed from dimer bond-cleavage in solution, show a lesser ability to lower the work function. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

Although wind and wave modeling is rather successful in the open ocean, modeling enclosed seas, particularly seas with small basins and complex orography, presents challenges. Here, we use data assimilation to improve wind and wave simulations in the Red Sea. We generated two sets of wind fields using a nested, high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting model implemented with (VARFC) and without (CTL) assimilation of observations. Available conventional and satellite data were assimilated using the consecutive integration method with daily initializations over one year (2009). By evaluating the two wind products against in-situ data from synoptic stations, buoys, scatterometers, and altimeters, we found that seasonal patterns of wind and wave variability were well reproduced in both experiments. Statistical scores for simulated winds computed against QuikSCAT, buoy, and synoptic station observations suggest that data assimilation decreases the root-mean-square error to values between 1 and 2 m s-1 and reduces the scatter index by 30% compared to the CTL. Sensitivity clearly increased around mountain gaps, where the channeling effect is better described by VARFC winds. The impact of data assimilation is more pronounced in wave simulations, particularly during extreme winds and in the presence of mountain jets. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Shared memory parallelization of the flux kernel of PETSc-FUN3D, an unstructured tetrahedral mesh Euler flow code previously studied for distributed memory and multi-core shared memory, is evaluated on up to 61 cores per node and up to 4 threads per core. We explore several thread-level optimizations to improve flux kernel performance on the state-of-the-art many integrated core (MIC) Intel processor Xeon Phi “Knights Corner,” with a focus on strong thread scaling. While the linear algebraic kernel is bottlenecked by memory bandwidth for even modest numbers of cores sharing a common memory, the flux kernel, which arises in the control volume discretization of the conservation law residuals and in the formation of the preconditioner for the Jacobian by finite-differencing the conservation law residuals, is compute-intensive and is known to exploit effectively contemporary multi-core hardware. We extend study of the performance of the flux kernel to the Xeon Phi in three thread affinity modes, namely scatter, compact, and balanced, in both offload and native mode, with and without various code optimizations to improve alignment and reduce cache coherency penalties. Relative to baseline “out-of-the-box” optimized compilation, code restructuring optimizations provide about 3.8x speedup using the offload mode and about 5x speedup using the native mode. Even with these gains for the flux kernel, with respect to execution time the MIC simply achieves par with optimized compilation on a contemporary multi-core Intel CPU, the 16-core Sandy Bridge E5 2670. Nevertheless, the optimizations employed to reduce the data motion and cache coherency protocol penalties of the MIC are expected to be of value for CFD and many other unstructured applications as many-core architecture evolves. We explore large-scale distributed-shared memory performance on the Cray XC40 supercomputer, to demonstrate that optimizations employed on Phi hybridize to this context, where each of thousands of nodes are comprised of two sockets of Intel Xeon Haswell CPUs with 32 cores per node.

Wind energy is expected to contribute to alleviating the rise in energy demand in the Middle East that is driven by population growth and industrial development. However, variability and intermittency in the wind resource present significant challenges to grid integration of wind energy systems. These issues are rarely addressed in the literature of wind resource assessment in the Middle East due to sparse meteorological observations with varying record lengths. In this study, the wind field with consistent space–time resolution for over three decades at three hub heights (50m, 80m, 140m) over the whole Arabian Peninsula is constructed using the Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) dataset. The wind resource is assessed at a higher spatial resolution with metrics of temporal variations in the wind than in prior studies. Previously unrecognized locations of interest with high wind abundance and low variability and intermittency have been identified in this study and confirmed by recent on-site observations. In particular, the western mountains of Saudi Arabia experience more abundant wind resource than most Red Sea coastal areas. The wind resource is more variable in coastal areas along the Arabian Gulf than their Red Sea counterparts at a similar latitude. Persistent wind is found along the coast of the Arabian Gulf.

The effects of the stratifications of temperature, T, and equivalence ratio, φ{symbol}, on the ignition characteristics of a lean homogeneous biodiesel/air mixture at high pressure and intermediate temperature are investigated using direct numerical simulations (DNSs). 2-D DNSs are performed at a constant volume with the variance of temperature and equivalence ratio (T′ and φ{symbol}′) together with a 2-D isotropic velocity spectrum superimposed on the initial scalar fields. In addition, three different T s(-) φ{symbol} correlations are investigated: (1) baseline cases with T′ only or φ{symbol}′ only, (2) uncorrelated T s(-) φ{symbol} distribution, and (3) negatively-correlated T s(-) φ{symbol} distribution. It is found that the overall combustion is more advanced and the mean heat release rate is more distributed over time with increasing T′ and/or φ{symbol}′ for the baseline and uncorrelated T s(-) φ{symbol} cases. However, the temporal advancement and distribution of the overall combustion caused by T′ or φ{symbol}′ only are nearly annihilated by the negatively-correlated T s(-) φ{symbol} fields. The chemical explosive mode and Damköhler number analyses verify that for the baseline and uncorrelated T s(-) φ{symbol} cases, the deflagration mode is predominant at the reaction fronts for large T′ and/or φ{symbol}′. On the contrary, the spontaneous ignition mode prevails for cases with small T′ or φ{symbol}′, especially for cases with negative T s(-) φ{symbol} correlations, and hence, simultaneous auto-ignition occurs throughout the entire domain, resulting in an excessive rate of heat release. It is also found that turbulence with large intensity, u′, and a short time scale can effectively smooth out initial thermal and compositional fluctuations such that the overall combustion is induced primarily by spontaneous ignition. Based on the present DNS results, the generalization of the effects of T′, φ{symbol}′, and u′ on the HCCI combustion is made to clarify each effect. These results suggest that temperature and composition stratifications together with a well-designed T s(-) φ{symbol} correlation can alleviate an excessive rate of pressure rise and control the ignition-timing in homogeneous charge compression-ignition (HCCI) combustion. © 2014 The Combustion Institute.

A background velocity model containing the correct low-wavenumber information is desired for both the quality of the migration image and the success of waveform inversion. To achieve this goal, the velocity is updated along the reflection wavepaths, rather than along both the reflection ellipses and transmission wavepaths as in conventional FWI. This method allows for reconstructing the low-wavenumber part of the background velocity model, even in the absence of long offsets and low-frequency component of the data. Moreover, in gradient-based iterative updates, instead of forming the data error conventionally, we propose to exploit the phase mismatch between the observed and the calculated data. The phase mismatch emphasizes a kinematic error and varies quasi-linearly with respect to the velocity error. The phase mismatch is computed (1) in the frequency-wavenumber (f-k) domain replacing the magnitudes of the calculated common shot gather by those of the observed one, and (2) in the temporal-spatial domain to form the difference between the transformed calculated common-shot gather and the observed one. The background velocity model inverted according to the proposed methods can serve as an improved initial velocity model for conventional waveform inversion. Tests with synthetic and field data show both the benefits and limitations of this method.