Sharif Digital Repository

The excessive exploitation of fossil resources has induced climate change and consequently water scarcity, which jeopardizes agriculture and the sustainable development of regions. The main objective of this study is to establish a synergy among various components of the nexus model, planning, and policy-making to address the water scarcity crisis and its adverse implications for ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and employment growth in a region based on the regional constraints. This study develops a water-energy-food-waste nexus model that incorporates data on renewable energy potential, wastewater treatment, and specifically herbal plant cultivation, to... 

The paper studies the optimum panel horizontal orientation angle toward the Sun and the optimum time interval of the panel’s movement. The optimum time intervals or panel movement can change the rate of input energy to the panel surface in Iran. For this purpose, a neural network has been trained to estimate the intensity of solar radiation in Iran. After model validation, the intensity of solar radiation has been estimated by selecting adequate geographical regions. Based on the intensity of sunlight, Iran has been divided into ten regions. In these regions, 40 cities have been randomly selected to study the effect of the panel’s angle variations within appropriate time inter-vals, as well... 

Demographic, economic, social, and climate change are all putting pressure increasing on natural resources through global energy, food, and water demand growth, which threatens the well-being of the ecosystems. To address this scientific and political challenge, a dual-purpose optimization tool has been proposed with the approach of minimizing the environmental effects and development costs of the region in line with resource consumption management, which optimally takes resources from the ecosystem, and regarding development approach (ecotourism development in this study), it has suggested the optimal strategy to improve the economic benefits. Moreover, this model is able to propose some... 

Nowadays, the construction industry has turned to the consumption of large amounts of natural resources in line with global population growth, which has led to the shortage of resources, and consequently increases in the construction debris; therefore, the present article has studied the positive and negative points of the architectural development process. The results have indicated that being compared to the former architecture; the development of architecture has reduced energy consumption by 78%. Hence, the scarcity of virgin resources and consequently the increase of environmental effects such as Global Warming Potential (GWP) have been measured based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).... 

This study combines an investigation of Kish Island's transition to sustainable energy and transportation with a focus on the integration of hydrogen port infrastructure, employing nonlinear optimization to chart the path forward. It emphasizes the pivotal role of such infrastructure in transitioning from traditional vehicles and gas-fired power, evaluating scenarios like a 30% reduction in fossil fuels and the implementation of carbon taxes to encourage a shift to electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles. Forecasts suggest an increase in electric vehicle adoption to 46% by 2023, with a goal of complete electrification by 2042, thereby transforming the energy landscape and reducing emissions.... 

Blockchain and smart contracts are measures to speed up the diffusion of circular economy into construction processes. Nevertheless, integrated solutions that cover all the aspects of circular supply chain including network structure, business processes, and products are still missing. This chapter addresses this gap, through offering a workable solution to address the disconnected nature of blockchain adoption across construction procedures. Informed by the overall approach of design science research (DSR), the solution is created following the five-staged procedure of DSR: (1) problem identification, (2) treatment suggestion, (3) treatment design, (4) evaluation and (5) conclusion.... 

Blockchain and smart contracts are measures to speed up the diffusion of circular economy into construction processes. Nevertheless, integrated solutions that cover all the aspects of circular supply chain including network structure, business processes, and the products are still missing. This paper is an attempt to bridge this gap, through offering a workable solution to address the disconnected nature of blockchain adoption across construction procedures. Informed by the overall approach of design science research (DSR), the solution is created following the five-staged procedure of DSR: (1) problem identification, (2) treatment suggestion, (3) treatment design, (4) evaluation and (5)... 

This paper explains a thorough exergy analysis of the most important reactions in soil– plant interactions. Soil, which is a prime mover of gases, metals, structural crystals, and electrolytes, constantly resembles an electric field of charge and discharge. The second law of thermodynamics reflects the deterioration of resources through the destruction of exergy. In this study, we developed a new method to assess the exergy of soil and plant formation processes. Depending on the types of soil, one may assess the efficiency and degradation of resources by incorporating or using biomass storage. According to the results of this study, during different processes from the mineralization process... 

In this paper, inspired by a gas turbine power plant, the interaction between plant-soil processes has been simulated. It is aimed to indicate that solar energy in the photosynthesis process is equivalent to the fuel in combustion chambers. In the glucose production process, when solar exergy is considered as a fuel, 99.4% of total exergy cost is supplied by solar exergy and only 0.6% of the exergy cost is provided by nutrients’ content. In general, 30% of the total exergy entering the Calvin cycle is consumed in glucose production and the remaining 70% is related to biomass generation (as flue gas in the gas turbine). Moreover, 98% of the total exergy cost of the soil box is related to... 

This paper introduces an innovative approach that combines Net Zero Energy (NZE), Net Zero Carbon (NZC), and Regenerative principles, redefining sustainable architecture in Iran. Focusing on a residential “attached house,” the study employed strategies like thermal insulation, Low-E glass, shading, and renewable energy sources. Results show a 45 % improvement in thermal performance, reducing heating gas usage by over 42 % and electricity usage by 8 %. With shading, heating and cooling demands decreased by 51.7 % and 12.55 %, respectively. Swapping conventional walls for a thermal mass system led to a 74 % reduction in heating gas and a 17.2 % cut in cooling electricity. Additionally, PV... 

There are several methods for assessing ecosystem tolerance level, each method is defined according to the target of the ecosystem development. This paper seeks a way to plan for the development of the existing ecosystems modified for human activities. For this purpose, two methods have been applied to assess the effects of local development on the local ecosystem tailored to the different demands. Thus, after gathering data in a coastal region all technologies being capable to be applied in this region regarding ecotourism development (population growth) were determined. Via different indicators, the quality of the ecosystem was evaluated. The Ecosystem Quality Index (EQI) and Technique for... 

Whole-of-economy greenhouse gas emissions reduction is one of the most important targets of transitioning to sustainable energy systems. With 7% of global emissions, the steel industry is one of the most carbon-intensive industries. Approximately two-thirds of annual steel production is attributed to the conventional blast furnace (BF)/converter route with high carbon emissions. Many countries in the world have developed large-scale laboratory pilots in line with steel production processes with green hydrogen or syngas. In this study, the experienced strategies of green, gray, and blue steel generation in the world are studied. Accordingly, the technology development approach of different... 

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been at the frontline of nanotechnology for the recent decade due to their significant porosity, large surface area, varied configuration, and tunable chemical architecture. However, the utilization of these compounds in biomedicine is facing severe challenges. These problems can be addressed by an innovative approach via hybridizing MOFs with natural polymers such as cellulose, which have excellent mechanical properties and biodegradability and are easily modified chemically. Cellulose-MOFs (CelloMOFs) are new, appealing hybrid composites that provide unique properties unavailable in other materials by conjugating cellulosic derivatives with MOFs. The... 

The study presents a comprehensive analysis of utilizing urban sewage sludge for low-carbon hydrogen and power production in steel manufacturing. Focusing on biomass gasification and anaerobic digestion, it evaluates the efficiency of various technologies. Key findings include the effectiveness of micro turbines with scrubbing and Stirling Motors with PSA for simultaneous heat and power generation, achieving output powers of 1081.44 kW and 1167.74 kW, and annual electricity generations of 9.45 GWh and 10.20 GWh, respectively. For hydrogen and synthesis gas production, the PSA (Pressure Swing Adsorption) technology showed a volumetric flow rate of 14315.23/day and a mass flow rate of 862.4... 

Silica-supported boron trifluoride (BF3·SiO2) is an efficient, readily available and reusable catalyst for the synthesis of 1,2,4,5-tetrasubstituted imidazoles using benzil, an aromatic aldehyde and an amine in the presence of ammonium acetate. This one-pot procedure is very simple, affording good to excellent yields. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved  

Seizures are defined as manifest of excessive and hypersynchronous activity of neurons in the cerebral cortex and represent a frequent malfunction of the human central nervous system. Therefore, the search for precursors and predictors of a seizure is of utmost clinical relevance and may even guide us to a deep understanding of the seizure generating mechanisms. In this study we analyzed invasive electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings in rats with experimentally induced generalized epilepsy with a nonlinear method called, dissimilarity index. In order to predict epileptic seizures automatically, Bhattacharyya distance between trajectory matrix of reference window, during an interval quite... 

Magnetic convection heat transfer in a two-dimensional square cavity induced by magnetic field gradient is investigated numerically using a semi-implicit finite volume method. The side walls of the cavity are heated with different temperatures, the top and bottom walls are isolated, and a permanent magnet is located near the bottom wall. Thermal buoyancy-induced flow is neglected due to the nongravity condition on the plane of the cavity. Conditions for the different values of non-dimensional variables in a variety of ferrofluid properties and magnetic field parameters are studied. Based on this numerical analysis, a general correlation for the overall Nusselt number on the side walls is... 

In this paper, we propose an efficient method for R-peak detection in noninvasive fetal electrocardiogram (ECG) signals which are acquired from multiple electrodes on mother's abdomen. The proposed method is performed in two steps: first, we employ a robust tensor decomposition-based method for fetal ECG extraction, assuming different heart rates for mother and fetal ECG; then a method based on extended Kalman filter (EKF) in which the ECG beat is modeled by 3 state equations (P, QRS and T), is used for fetal R-peak detection. The results show that the proposed method is efficiently able to estimate the location of R-peaks of fetal ECG signals. The obtained average scores of event 4 and 5 on...