Today, hydrogen is enjoying a strong momentum worldwide as the fuel of the future, and is expected to have a considerable role to play in securing a clean energy future. Nations of the world have been adopting national roadmaps to employ hydrogen for their transition plans to low-carbon future. However, it remains a challenge to find clean energy sources to drive the hydrogen production process and divest it from the fossil-based production technologies. Currently, demand of hydrogen is dominated by heavy industries including oil and gas, steel, cement, glass and fertilizers manufacturing, among other heavy emitters of CO2. This demand is met by reforming or gasification of carbon-based fuels (e.g., methane, coal, and biomass). In this talk, innovative thermochemical Copper-Chlorine (Cu-Cl) hydrogen production technology, developed at Ontario Tech University, is introduced as a reliable and scalable technology for clean Hydrogen production. The Cu-Cl hydrogen cycle can operate on recovered waste-heat (approximately 500°C) from industrial processes. In this talk, Prof. Gabriel will highlight the potential integration of this innovative technology in steel and cement industries in Canada and elsewhere in Europe, China and the Middle East. This process which utilizes waste/process heat has the potential to significantly cut of CO2 emissions from such polluting industries. A case study on coupling this technology with a cement plant in Ontario will be presented.

Hydrogen, thermochemical Cu-Cl cycle, energy recovery, cement, steel

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Dr. Gabriel is an elected member of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the former A/Deputy Minister of Research at the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. In 1990, Dr. Gabriel attended the prestigious, MIT-founded, International Space University and received a diploma in Space Sciences. For over 14 years, Dr. Gabriel led an international team in the research efforts spearheaded by NASA to design, test and operate a thermal management system for the International Space Station (ISS). In 2004, Dr. Gabriel was invited to lead the development of the research and innovation ecosystem in a newly established university. He assumed the position of the founding AVP research and graduate programs at Ontario Tech University (formerly the University of Ontario Institute of Technology) in Ontario, Canada. Under his leadership, Ontario Tech University was ranked as one of the top Canadian higher learning institutions in the categories of innovation and leaders of tomorrow  .

Methanol is an alternative fuel that offers convenient storage, transport and utilization, hence has attracted many attentions recently. Coalto-methanol (CTM) is a mature, inexpensive industrial process for methanol production, yet accompanied with large CO2 emissions and low C conversion rate due to the mismatch of H/C ratio between feedstock and product. In this study, a novel low carbon process of the CTM coupled with green hydrogen is proposed, in which the water gas shift (WGS) sector is replaced by water electrolysis based on solar power for adjusting the hydrogen carbon ratio. Additional methanol production could be achieved from the hydrogenation of CO2 absorbed by rectisol, hence further increasing the C conversion rate and decreasing CO2 emissions. Sensitivity analysis is conducted with regard to the key parameters such as synthetic pressure and temperature, and the comprehensive performance of the new process system is compared with the conventional CTM from the perspective of energy-environment-economy (3E), using exergy efficiency, total annual cost (TAC) and equivalent CO2 emissions as evaluation indicators. In addition, a quantitative sustainability evaluation method is introduced, in which a dynamic econometric model considering volatility of product/raw material price, electricity price and carbon tax is established. The results reveal that the system is operated successfully under the optimum settings, increasing  ethanol output with lower carbon emission. The goal of green and efficient production is achieved economically, showing the perspective of CTM integration with renewable energy sources.

Coal-to-methanol, green hydrogen, 3E assessment, economic uncertainty

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Dr.Yang works as a faculty staff at Xi’an Jiaotong University since he got the PhD degree from the University on 2010. He once conducted studies abroad at the University of Queensland (2009.1-2010.1) and Tokyo University of Science, Noda (2011.6-2012.6). He is now the head of Department of Process Equipment and Control Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University. His present research interests include efficient storage and utilization of hydrogen energy, industrial energy saving technology, process modeling and optimization based on historical data. He has published tens of peer-reviewed journal papers in the field of energy and chemical engineering, and was granted multiple Chinese patents.

As we know, people spend 80% of their daily time in buildings, and under current conditions there is an increased demand for improved quality of the indoor environment.

This means in the first place, that the different actors, buyers and other beneficiaries will evaluate their decisions regarding purchases, entertainment, housing, work, etc. , taking into account the indoor conditions of buildings. After the pandemic, the demand for a higher quality of comfort and hygiene of the interior environment will be decisive in the preferences of its users, since their personal safety is affected. A consequence of this is that in the case of the renovation of commercial or public buildings, the opinion of its users, visitors, workers, owners, etc. must be considered in the planning and renovation process. Furthermore, the post-monitoring process must take into account the opinion of users regarding the perception of the quality of the interior comfort, to evaluate the efficiency and correct the operation of the energy and ventilation systems. Lastly, operating costs of buildings will be higher, however increase in sales and in the use of services may compensate for that.

It is evident to the population that the deterioration in the quality of the exterior and interior environment is due to both local and distant entities (both public and private). This results in the rational demand of users, that the weight of the financing of the energy and climate renewal must be shared by the different stakeholders responsible for this phenomenon. Thus, it is necessary to find the mechanisms to attract resources from those responsible. This can be solved by changes to state and municipality tax policy, or by financing from the institutions of the European Union.

The main stakeholders in a retrofitting process for public and commercial buildings (Lessor, Users, Investors, and Developers) will consider technical, energy, legal, and economic aspects of a holistic retrofitting solution that fit into their interest chain both from an individual and from their shared perspective.

Therefore, a value-driven process must be set up. In practice, stakeholders need to define and clearly state a common goal and retrofitting strategy, as well as to set up shared management for the design and implementation of the project. There must be a business case for the project that should include energy saving as well as, so-called co-impacts, such as the increased market value of the property. The main drivers of retrofitting public and commercial buildings typically include cost savings and improvement of the overall state of the building. Typical technical solutions are: energy efficiency improvement, reduction of energy demand, and reduction of building related emissions. However, today, the comfort level determined by indoor air quality and thermal comfort, and by the functional, aesthetical and environmental factors are also essential to consider. The implementation process developed by the EcoShopping* project can be considered as a model for achieving such a holistic retrofit implementation.

Hydrogen, thermochemical Cu-Cl cycle, energy recovery, cement, steel

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I graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering from the Chilean University for Technology (USACH today) as well as, one in Industrial Civil Engineering from TU Dresden. I conducted further studies at the Budapest University Technology and Economics, and the Central European University CEU). I have worked in the field of energy efficiency and retrofitting since 1995, before then, I had worked as Director for Housing Development, at the National Corporation for Housing (CORVI) in Chile (1971-72), researcher at VÁTI (Office of Regional Development and Urban Planning in Hungary), specialized in Housing Policy, Analysis of Regional Development Processes and Infrastructure Development, as a consultant on the 1982-86 rehabilitation project of the historical centre of Santiago de Cuba. I was a member of the National Housing Policy Advisory Committee of Hungary (2002-10). Some of my projects from recent years included the coordination of the ECOShopping Project, which entailed the development of a holistic approach to financing, integrating top technologies and improving the indoor and outdoor environment quality of buildings, the GINOP supported „Umbrella Controlling” named R+D Digital System, which optimizes the indoor environment quality, as an instrument of BMS. In 2021, we finished the „UNIHARD” project, a new hardware system for monitoring and controlling energetical processes in buildings.

After the emergence of coronavirus in 2019, with the specific form of COVID-19, it has spread to the other parts of the world and urged the societies to uphold the social distance between people in order to prevent the danger and reduce the infection risk. The social distance practice in societies has shut down the vital parts of the administrations, businesses, education centers and many of the industries have stopped the normal functioning. The disruption of the normal practice of living and doing business have changed the life routine of the people and induced immense volatility in the markets. This is still happening in the world, while the duration of the pandemic is not yet predictable.

Therefore, the talk will discuss the new application of information technology to make use of the infrastructural intelligent methods in the recovery of businesses, and the novel applications of the interconnected and efficient services in the various aspects of life, economy and industry during the post corona period.

Especially, we will elaborate on the novel practices toward innovative waste management for clean energy production, the sustainable supply chain management through the smart technologies, and the new sustainable smart mobility, which all have become the center of attention in the wake of covid-19 pandemic.

Covid-19, Clean Production, Energy Saving, Smart Technology, Environmental Friendly Solutions

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Ebrahim Navid Sadjadi has extensive experience in teaching at all levels and in providing workshops and tutorials. He has organized the workshops in American Control Conference (ACC 2021), American Control Conference (ACC 2020) and International Conference on Smart Grids and Energy Systems, 2020, Australia, among others.

His teaching specialties include data management, digitalization and optimization of the ICT based Industries. His publications include theoretical and application based academic articles and case-studies in the high impact Journals beside the methodological monographs (books). Navid also has some consultancy experience to chambers of commerce, parks of technologies, and governmental bodies. He has worked as a broker for marketing of the innovative products in Spain and has collaborated with ACCIO (Agència per la Competitivitat de l’Empresa) in Barcelona.

Navid has worked as a broker for marketing of innovative products in Poland, has collaborated with Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (PARP) and Department of International Cooperation, Ministry of Economic Development of Poland. Besides, he has collaborated with Enterprise Europe Development (Innovation Development of France) and German BVMW Association of SMEs – MittelStand.

Maching Learning (ML) algorithms have been more prevalent in recent years, and they are being used to tackle complicated issues across a broad range of fields. Wind energy is not an exception, as ML has recently been applied to wind turbine blade design, wake velocity and wake turbulence intensity prediction, and even wind farm optimization. The immense learning ability of ML models enables them to be trained to predict and regress a complex relationship with a high degree of accuracy. However, data for testing ML models often originate from the same rotor simulation used for training, with just slight variations in operating conditions. This research aims to investigate the generalizability of ML-based wake prediction models, i.e., whether ML can correctly predict wake properties using data from a different wind turbine that was not taken for training. This investigation’s observation shows that a generalized ML wake model requires training data from multiple turbines with a wide range of operating conditions. In addition, advanced regularization, complex loss functions, and ML methods that focus on capturing the physics (such as Physics Informed Artificial Neural Networks (PINN) and symbolic regression) can be utilized.

Wake velocity, turbulence intensity, Support Vector Regression (SVR), Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost).

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Prof. Eddie is elected as:

• Academician for European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA, EU);
• Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (FASME, USA);
• Fellow of Institute of Engineering and Technology (FIET, United Kingdom);
• Fellow of International Engineering and Technology Institute (FIETI, Hong Kong),
• Distinguished Fellow for Institute of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence,

(DFIDSAI, China), and, Academician for Academy of Pedagogy and Learning, (USA).

He has published numerous papers in SCI-IF int. journal (555); int. conf. proceedings (130), textbook chapters (>105) and others (32) over the 29 years. Co-edited 14 books in STEM areas.

He is the:

• Lead Editor-in-Chief for the ISI Journal of Mechanics in Medicine and Biology for dissemination of original research in all fields of mechanics in medicine and biology since 2000;
• Founding Editor-in-Chief for the ISI indexed Journal of Medical Imaging and Health Informatics (2011-2021);
• Associate editor or EAB of various referred international journals such as Applied Intelligence, BioMedical Engineering OnLine, Computers in Biology & Medicine, and, Journal of Advanced Thermal Science Research. .