Aggressive growth of land-based solar photovoltaic (PV) farms can create a land use conflict with agricultural production. Fortunately, this issue can be resolved using the concept of agrivoltaics, which is co-development of land area for both solar PV and agriculture. To investigate and quantify PV generation potential, without harming agriculture output, this study explores the viability of agrivoltaic farms deployment on existing grape farms in India. Considering the shade tolerance of gra...
Lowcost gas metal arc welding (GMAW)based 3D printing has proven effective at additive manufacturing steel and aluminum parts. Early success, however, was based on handwriting Gcode, which is inadequate for the majority of potential users. To enable automated slicing a 3D model and generating Gcode for an acceptable path for GMAW 3D printing, this paper reports on upgrading of the free and open source CuraEngine. The new slicer, MOSTMetalCura, provides the following novel abil...
Nickel doped zinc oxide (Ni/ZnO) nanostructures have the potential to improve the performance of electrochemical capacitors. This study investigates the preparation of Ni/ZnO nanomaterials by facile co-precipitation (CPM) and hydrothermal (HTM) methods. The effect of the synthesis methods on the optical, structural, chemical and morphological properties on ZnO products is investigated using ultra violet (UV)-visible spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron micro...
Barriers to inventing electronic devices involve challenges of iterating electronic designs due to long lead times for professional circuit board milling or high costs of commercial milling machines. To overcome these barriers, this study provides open source (OS) designs for a low-cost circuit milling machine. First, design modifications for mechanical and electrical subsystems of the OS Distributed 3-D (D3D) Robotics prototyping system are provided. Next, Copper Carve, an OS custom graphica...
Avoiding climate destabilization caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, requires climate-neutral electricity sources. It has been proposed that the GHG emissions from coal-fired power plants can be offset by carbon capture and sequestration or bio-sequestration. However, solar photovoltaic (PV) technology has recently declined so far in costs it now offers both technical and economic potential to offset all of coal-fired electricity use. PV only emits GHGs during fabrication and not during...
This study presents an entirely open-source, low-cost power monitoring system capable of many types of measurements including both loads and supplies such as solar photovoltaic systems. In addition, the system can be fabricated using only open source software and hardware. The design revolves around the Digital Universal Energy Logger (DUEL) Node, which is responsible for reading and properly scaling the voltage and current of a particular load, and then serializing it via an on-board ATTiny8...
Simple 3-D printable open source hardware designs have proven to be effective scientific instruments at low costs. Further development in this area is coupling open source electronics with 3-D printable mechanical components to make fully functional distributedly-manufactured mechatronic tools for science. One research area where such low-cost technology is needed is to characterize thin film anti-reflective coatings and transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) for the glass, mirror and solar pho...
According to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) ‘s indicator baseline 2017 report of South Africa, the percentage of the population using safely managed drinking water services has remained more or less constant around 91% between 2014 and 2016. The observation of the same variable from 1996 to 2011, shows a significant increase from 76.6% to 89.4%. This therefore means between 2011 and 2016, the change has been insignificant. To have a sample analysis in this regard, on the dynamics...
Abstract The ‘City Logistics’ activities are contributing to traffic congestion and accumulating to environmental challenges, such situation has prompted the creation of urban consolidation centre (UCC), as a multimodal logistics park facility in the outskirts. The relocation of business from city to the outskirts requires the evaluation and assessment of the key factors in order to make the better decisions. However, no relocation decisions evaluation model has been found, neither its ap...
ABSTRACT. Routing protocol has taken some vital roles in this modern internet era. Routing protocol determines how routers communicates with each other to enable the forwarding of packets that takes place through the use of optimal path which enables transmission from one source node to the destination node. In this study work, the exploration of the important protocols, namely; Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Open Short Path First protocol (OSPF), Routing Information Prot...
ABSTRACT Moringa oleifera grows in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. It is commonly known as ‘drumstick tree’ or ‘horseradish tree’ in Nigeria. Moringa can withstand both severe drought and mild frost conditions and hence widely cultivated across the world. With its high therapeutic values, every part of the tree is suitable for either nutritional or commercial purposes. The leaves are rich in minerals, vitamins and other essential phytochemicals. Extracts from the le...
ABSTRACT Maize, known in many English-speaking countries as corn, is a grain domesticated by indigenous people in prehistoric times. The Aztecs and Mayans cultivated it in numerous varieties throughout central and southern Mexico, to cook or grind in a process called nixtamalization. The crop spread throughout America and later around the 1250 BC it spread to all corners of the region. Any significant or dense populations in the region developed a great trade network based on surplus and var...
Some inventions are glamorous and very sophisticated – microchips embedded system technology –and more while some others are quieter, yet not less relevant in easing the work that man has to do with his own energy. Pumps do fall in the latter category (Mario, 2001). This project is intended to model a portable solar powered suction pump. Pumps are devices that transfer fluids (liquid or gas) from one point to another through some mechanical means. Pumps generally have being in use for cen...
This project is based on the design and construction of a Wireless Electronic Notice Board. It can be widely used to display latest information anywhere such as institutions, shop, place of worship and other places. This Wireless Electronic Notice Board will offer flexibility to user to control the information display within 50m to 200m range. Similar works were reviewed and the draw backs of these projects were cited and their advantage also considered. The design of the Wireless Elec...
Solar powered systems have been built for various applications ranging from public lighting to water supply units but robust efforts have not been made in the development of pumping systems that can effectively replace the manually operated pumps used in field applications. Designing a machine that can pump the fluid without the need of so much energy on the part of the operator as well as boycott the use of direct electricity will hence be a reasonable contribution to field of maintenance an...