Micro/Nanotransport Phenomena in Renewable Energy
and Energy Efficiency
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Citation
Peterson, G.P."Bud", et al. "Micro/Nanotransport Phenomena in
Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency." Advances in
Mechanical Engineering, Volume 2010 (2010), Article ID 170590,
2 p. © 2010 G. P. “Bud” Peterson et al.
As Published
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2010/170590
Publisher
Hindawi Pub. Corp.
Version
Final published version
Accessed
Thu May 26 06:22:56 EDT 2016
Citable Link
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/61388
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Creative Commons Attribution
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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Volume 2010, Article ID 170590, 2 pages
doi:10.1155/2010/170590
Editorial
Micro/Nanotransport Phenomena in Renewable
Energy and Energy Efficiency
G. P. “Bud” Peterson,1 Chen Li,2 Moran Wang,3 and Gang Chen4
1 The
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0325, USA
of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA
3 Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
4 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA 02139, USA
2 Department
Correspondence should be addressed to G. P. “Bud” Peterson, bud.peterson@gatech.edu
Received 8 March 2010; Accepted 8 March 2010
Copyright © 2010 G. P. “Bud” Peterson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.
As a result of serious concerns about climate change, high
oil prices, and peak oil, energy has become one of the
most important issues of our time. Renewable energy and
energy-saving technologies are potentially crucial parts of
the ultimate solutions to both energy sustainability and
climate change. The set of papers in this special issue of
“Micro/nanotransport phenomena in renewable energy and
energy efficiency” address some of the basic aspects of
renewable energy harvest/conversion, emission control, and
optimization of energy issues of today.
Contained herein, Vorobyev and Guo [1] develop a
new method based on Femtosecond laser to fabricate highquality metallic light absorbers. This method significantly
enhances broadband absorption of electromagnetic radiation by creating a complex of nano- and microstructures.
These artificially made surfaces can be used to improve the
energy conversion efficiency such as thermophotovoltaics
and solar energy absorbers. Hydrogen and fuel cell technologies emerged as one of the most favorable solutions to
diversity energy resources and to energy sustainability and
environment. Fell cell technology is a significant component in this special issue. Topics include the experimental
and numerical study of cold startup of Proton Exchange
Membrane (PEM) fuel cell [2], which is one of most
promising solutions for the next generation of purely
electric automobiles, development of a continuum model
for water transport in the Ionomer-phase of catalyst-coated
membranes for PEM [3], and mesoscopic modeling based
on the lattice Boltzmann method for water management in
fell cells [4]. Emission control is attracting more attention
and is also addressed in this special issue. Nanosized
cerium oxide particles as additives on biodiesel were found
to appreciably reduce the emission levels of hydrocarbon
and NOx through enhancing hydrocarbon oxidation and
promoting complete combustion [5]. Mesoscopic modeling
of multiphysicochemical transport phenomena in porous
media based on the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) has
been found to be especially effective to model the dissolving
process of supercritical CO2 into geologic formations such
as limestone rock [4], which may provide a comprehensive
numerical tool to simulate the long-term fate of CO2 after
injection into the geologic formations. Thermal management is important to concentrated solar technology. Flatplate oscillating heat pipes are shown to be capable of cooling
photovoltaic cells with high concentration ratios because of
their superior performance under high-heat flux conditions
[6]. Nanoparticles can be used to improve the convective heat
transfer at high Reynolds number [7]. The optimization of
energy in the end use is included in this special issue since
it is important to energy sustainability and the environment.
The “field synergy principle” proposed by Guo (see [8–11])
is illustrated to be an effective tool to optimize the energy and
mass flow in energy system [12].
G. P. “Bud” Peterson
Chen Li
MoranWang
Gang Chen
2
References
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Advances in Mechanical Engineering