Heba Alzaben

It is essential to investigate alternative energy solutions, especially those derived from renewable energy sources due to the growing global fossil fuel crisis. Renewable and sustainable energy sources have gained significant technological, economical, and environmental attention from researchers globally over the past decade. It has become a viable and sustainable alternative solution compared to conventional fossil fuels, providing cleaner, derived from naturally replenishing sources, with low gas emissions, and more environmentally friendly method for power production. Renewable sources include geothermal, solar, wind, hydropower, and biomass energy. These sources have various environmental impacts; however, these effects are significantly less compared to fossil fuel sources. As an example, fossil fuel-power plants require 35 times more land compared to geothermal power plants. Additionally, geothermal power plants emit approximately one-sixth of the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by natural gas power plants. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the environmental impacts, specifically addressing water and air pollution (i.e., greenhouse gas emissions) associated with utilizing renewable energy sources for power production, which can serve as a crucial tool for policy, developers, and decision makers when planning the usage of renewable energy sources.

As global energy demand increases, transitioning to renewable energy sources becomes essential to address different environmental and economic limitations. Jordan experiences significant economic strain due to its reliance on imported fossil fuel energy sources, a reliance that also contributes to various environmental impacts, including elevated greenhouse gas emissions. The National Jordan Energy Strategy seeks to expand the share of renewable energy sources, with particular emphasis on solar and wind power, leveraging the country’s favorable climatic conditions and geographical location. Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems are crucial for managing peak energy demand and optimizing energy utilization. However, there are different variables that impact the efficiency of PV panels including dust accumulation, which can severely decrease power efficiency and service life through solar radiation reduction, panel temperature increase, and the change in electrical characteristics. The average power loss of solar PV panels due to dust accumulation is significant, potentially reaching up to 1% per day. This paper provides an overview of different PV panel cleaning mechanisms, including manual and machine cleaning, automatic wipers, electrostatic precipitators, and self-cleaning coatings. These mechanisms can increase the solar PV panel efficiency between 15 to 20% with 25% improved output energy.

The second law of thermodynamics investigates the quality of energy, or in other words exergy, described as the maximum useful to the dead-state work. The objective of this paper is to investigate the energy and exergy flows in a crop plant system in order to identify the dominant flows and parameters (e.g., temperature) affecting crop plant development. The need for energy and exergy analyses arises from the hypothesis that crop stress can be detected via surface temperature measurements, as explained by the exergy destruction principle (EDP). Based on the proposed energy model, it is observed that radiation and transpiration terms govern all other terms. In addition, as a result of exergy analysis, it is observed that solar exergy governs all input and output terms. The results obtained from this study support the hypothesis that crop surface temperature can be utilized as an indicator to detect crop stress.

Medical technology companies have focused on gait analysis and monitoring for several years due to their importance in the diagnosis of various movement abnormalities. Studying pressure distribution on the foot is very important for the detection of abnormalities, unwanted symptoms, and consequences. This paper aims to design a wearable, low-cost, and real-time gait cycle monitoring system, based on a Flexiforce sensor. In the proposed design, eight force sensors were attached to the insole to estimate the pressure distribution on the foot. Pressure distribution monitoring helps in the estimation of foot disorders and assists in the design of medical shoes for manipulating pressure into the right positions. Sensors were connected to an appropriate microcontroller for real-time monitoring. MATLAB was used to visualize and simulate the real-time plantar pressure variation through static and dynamic states. The obtained experimental results show that the system was stable in both static and dynamic measurements, which could be used to estimate the pressure distribution on the foot.