Variability of Thermal Comfort and Energy Consumption by Introducing Working from Home

Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have introduced working from home to avoid the risk of infection. In this study, we conducted questionnaire surveys and analysed the building energy management system (BEMS) in an office building where the number of employees working from home increased after the onset of the pandemic. The influence of working from home on the indoor environment satisfaction and the variability in energy consumption at home and office was determined. The indoor environment satisfaction was significantly higher when working from home than when working at the office. In 2020, the total energy consumption at home and office decreased by 30% in April and increased by 22% in August compared to the previous year. To work from home while saving energy regardless of the season, it is necessary to reduce office energy consumption by decreasing the number of workers present at the office. © 2022 17th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, INDOOR AIR 2022. All rights reserved.

Measuring carbon emissions performance of Japan's metal industry: Energy inputs, agglomeration, and the potential for green recovery reduction

This study measures the total factor carbnon dioxide (CO2) emissions performance of the metal industry, iron and steel, nonferrous metal, and metal processing industries in 39 Japanese prefectures from 2008 to 2019. The true fixed-effects panel stochastic frontier model identifies regional carbon efficiency as well as the inefficiency determinants. The main results are as follows. First, a decrease in the coal ratio and an increase in the electricity ratio in total energy consumption improves efficiency. This result suggests that electrification in the metal industry, especially conversion from blast furnaces to electric furnaces in the iron and steel industry, contributes to reducing carbon emissions. Second, industrial agglomeration improves carbon emissions performance in the metal industry. This implies that agglomeration and decarbonization policies focusing on there are more effective, rather than a uniform national policy. Third, compared to the cumulative CO2 emissions over the sample period, 49,017 × 103 tons, the cumulative CO2 mitigation potential is 29,703 × 103 tons, indicating that CO2 emissions can be reduced by 60.6% without affecting the output. Forth, to examine the green economic recovery with efficiency in Japan's metal industry after COVID-19, we present a simple scenario analysis where a k% replacement coal ratio with an electricity ratio in total energy consumption, assuming that each prefecture will achieve the maximum CO2 emission amount during the sample period. By replacing 10% of the coal ratio with the electricity ratio, CO2 emissions can be reduced by 23.0%. In the case of a 20% replacement, CO2 emissions can be reduced by 33.0%. Our results show that Japan's targets in the post-COVID-19 green recovery process should be a decrease in coal consumption, an increase in electricity, and industrial agglomeration. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd

Combined Effect of Changes in Transit Service and Changes in Occupancy on Per-Passenger Energy Consumption

Many transit providers changed their schedules and route configurations during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing more frequent bus service on major routes and curtailing other routes, to reduce the risk of COVID-19 exposure. This research first assessed the changes in Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) service configurations by reviewing the prepandemic versus during-pandemic General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) files. Energy use per route for a typical week was calculated for pre-pandemic, during-closure, and post-closure periods by integrating GTFS data with MOVES-Matrix transit energy and emission rates (MOVES signifying MOtor Vehicle Emission Simulator). MARTA automated passenger counter data were appended to the routes, and energy use per passenger-mile was compared across routes for the three periods. The results showed that the coupled effect of transit frequency shift and ridership decrease from 2019 to 2020 increased route-level energy use for over 87% of the routes and per-passenger-mile energy use for over 98% of the routes. In 2021, although MARTA service had largely returned to pre-pandemic conditions, ridership remained in an early stage of recovery. Total energy use decreased to about pre-pandemic levels, but per-passenger energy use remained higher for more than 91% of routes. The results confirm that while total energy use is more closely associated with trip schedules and routes, perpassenger energy use depends on both trip service and ridership. The results also indicate a need for data-based transit planning, to help avoid inefficiency associated with over-provision of service or inadequate social distancing protection caused by under-provision of service. © National Academy of Sciences: Transportation Research Board 2022.

Thermoelectric air disinfection system

Epidemic viruses seriously affect human health and the normal operation of society, so it is particularly important to effectively kill viruses. In this work, a thermoelectric air disinfection system is studied. Utilizing the characteristics of semiconductor thermoelectric sheets with both cold and hot ends, the system can simultaneously sterilize the air by heating and reduce the temperature of the air by cooling. The measurement results show that the air temperature can be increased to 80 ℃ for disinfection, and then cooled to 35 ℃, and the total energy utilization rate of the system can reach up to 1.2. In addition, combined with the measurement results and numerical calculations, the parameters such as the number of thermoelectric element series, input power, air flow, and boundary insulation can be used to analyze their effects on the system performance. The system has broad potential applications in public health, medical care, and household disinfection. © 2022 中国物理学会 Chinese Physical Society.

Efficient Sensing of Selected Amino Acids as Biomarker by Green Phosphorene Monolayers: Smart Diagnosis of Viruses

Effective techniques for the detection of selected viruses detection of their amino acids (AAs) constituents are highly desired, especially in the present COVID pandemic. Motivated by this, we have used density functional theory (DFT) simulations to explore the potential applications of green phosphorene monolayer (GPM) as efficient nanobio-sensor. We have employed van der Waals induced calculations to study the ground-state geometries, binding strength, electronic structures, and charge transfer mechanism of pristine, vacancy-induced and metal-doped GPM to detect the selected AAs, such as glycine, proline and aspartic, in both aqueous and non-aqueous media. We find that the interactions of studied AAs are comparatively weak on pristine (-0.49 to -0.76 eV) and vacancy-induced GPM as compared to the metal-doped GPM (-0.62 to -1.22 eV). Among the considered dopants, Ag-doping enhances the binding of AAs to the GPM stronger than the others. In addition to appropriate binding energies, significant charge transfers coupled with measurable changes in the electronic properties further authenticate the potential of GPM. Boltzmann thermodynamic analysis have been used to study the sensing mechanism under varied conditions of temperatures and pressure for the practical applications. Our findings signify the potential of G PM based sensors towards efficient detection of the selected AAs.

Impact of COVID-19 on Mobility and Electric Vehicle Charging Load

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted mobility and electricity consumption in 2020. The changes seen reflect responses to new COVID-19 cases, local health guidelines, and seasonality, making the impact regionally unique. This paper presents a data-driven case study of electric vehicle (EV) charging and mobility in the wake of COVID-19 in Utah. The study shows that the number of EV charging sessions and total energy consumed per day dropped by 40% immediately after the arrival of the first COVID-19 case in Utah. By contrast, the energy consumed per charging session fell by just 8% over the same periods and the distribution of session start and end times remained very consistent throughout the year. While EV mobility dropped more dramatically than total vehicle mobility during the first wave of COVID-19 cases, and returned more slowly, both returned to stable levels near their mean values by December 2020, despite a dramatic increase in new infections. © 2021 IEEE.