Abdul Hai Alami

University of Sharjah | US · Department of Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering

There are numerous reports and publications in reputable scientific and engineering journals that attribute substantial enhancement in heat transfer capabilities for heat exchangers once they employ nanofluids as working fluids. By definition, a nanofluid is a working fluid that has a small volume fraction (5% or less) of a solid particle with dime...

DC power may be more efficient than AC power in certain applications, especially when it comes to local generation and storage. This is because AC power requires extra equipment to convert it to DC power, which can lead to energy losses. Using DC power, on the other hand, makes it easier for devices to use it directly, resulting in higher energy ef...

Redox flow batteries represent a captivating class of electrochemical energy systems that are gaining prominence in large-scale storage applications. These batteries offer remarkable scalability, flexible operation, extended cycling life, and moderate maintenance costs. The fundamental operation and structure of these batteries revolve around the f...

Redox flow batteries represent a captivating class of electrochemical energy systems that are gaining prominence in large-scale storage applications. These batteries offer remarkable scalability, flexible operation, extended cycling life, and moderate maintenance costs. The fundamental operation and structure of these batteries revolve around the f...

Perovskite membranes have gained considerable attention in gas separation and production due to their unique properties such as high selectivity and permeability towards various gases. These membranes are composed of perovskite oxides, which have a crystalline structure that can be tailored to enhance gas separation performance. In oxygen enrichmen...

The investment in new PV technologies is important and is done by exploiting novel materials, materials processing, and manufacturing techniques to achieve performance levels that supersede those attained by classical counterparts. This chapter covers the unique materials and procedures utilized to produce dye-sensitized solar cells of the third-ge...

The investment in novel PV technology is an important tool to exploit novel materials and material processing and manufacturing technologies to achieve performance levels that supersede those attained by classical materials and processes. The following chapter highlights the novelty of materials and processes used to produce the third-generation te...

Solar photovoltaics are synonyms to renewable energy resources. It is rare to find a poster or a presentation about renewable energy without a photovoltaic panel in the background. This introduction is a concise presentation on the importance of manufacturing technologies on the price, development and prefoliation of the solar panels. It is importa...

To get from cell making to module making requires proper preparation of pristine wafers to be physically and electrically connected in series to achieve the rated output of a PV module. This chapter highlights the “silicon wafer to PV module” journey, with all pertinent steps of optically and electrically augmenting each wafer explained in details....

The conversion of solar energy into electricity has been sought since the 1800s. The augmentation of the once electrochemical system as a solid state device went hand-in-hand with the development of semiconductors. These semiconductors are made from ultra-fine silicon material that were doped with modifiers to make them behave as either positively...

This chapter focuses on obtaining and refining silicon under the stringent requirements of the photovoltaic manufacturing industry. Starting with the carbothermal process; a well-established manufacturing process of silicon, other processes such as chemical vapor deposition for further silicon refinement are also introduced and their history discus...

There is more than the maturity of the semiconductor industry that makes silicon a lucrative material for photovoltaic device manufacturing. Other advantages include the suitability of silicon material to absorb solar radiation in the visible region, where most of the useful and energetic solar radiation resides. This chapter introduces the physica...

The investment in novel PV technology is an important tool to exploit novel materials and materials processing and manufacturing technologies to achieve performance levels that supersede those attained by classical materials and processes. The following chapter highlights the novelty of materials and processes used to produce the third-generation t...

Although most relevant characterization techniques were mentioned throughout the previous chapters of the book, this chapter is a standalone reference on such techniques that will be important for any PV fabrication process.

The thin-film technologies are a direct answer to the monopoly of silicon materials in the PV market. With the silicon manufacturing processes being refined as art, the competition for high quality and low price has rendered small manufacturers incapable of competing in the silicon market. A new set of technologies and manufacturing processes have...

Concentrated solar power (CSP) technology is a promising renewable energy technology worldwide. However, many challenges facing this technology nowadays. These challenges are mentioned in this review study. For the first time, this work summarized and compared around 143 CSP projects worldwide in terms of status, capacity, concentrator technologies...

Fe x Cu[Formula: see text] binary alloys attracted much attention owing to their rich magnetic phase diagram and the challenges of achieving single phases in these systems. Despite early efforts put toward studying the physical properties of low-Cu doping in Fe–Cu alloys, a detailed understanding of the magnetic, structural and electrical propertie...

Fuel cell electric vehicles have the advantages of simple assembly, higher efficiency, and quiet operation compared to any other propulsion method. While there is a clear road map on the future of fuel cell electric vehicles, there is still a need for a paradigm shift to relent on using fossil fuels as soon as possible. The majority of the reviewed...

This work explores the role of 3D concrete printing (3DCP) in achieving the relevant sustainable development goals (SDGs) that were set out by the United Nations. The study focuses on the recent progress and limitations of the three dominant types of cementitious mixtures, ordinary Portland cement (OPC), recycled aggregate-based cement, and geopoly...

Recently, water desalination (WD) has been required for the supply of drinking water in a number of countries. Various technologies of WD utilize considerable thermal and/or electrical energies for removing undesirable salts. Desalination systems now rely on renewable energy resources (RERs) such as geothermal, solar, tidal, wind power, etc. The in...

Clean and safe energy sources are essential for the long-term growth of society. Wind energy is rapidly expanding and contributes to many countries’ efforts to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. In terms of sustainable development goals (SDGs), renewable energy development promotes energy security while also facilitating community development and e...

Nanomaterials have gained huge attention with their wide range of applications. This is mainly driven by their unique properties. Nanomaterials include nanoparticles, nanotubes, nanofibers, and many other nanoscale structures have been widely assessed for improving the performance of different applications. However, with the wide implementation and...

The demand for food items is increasing to match population growth rates. Meanwhile, many countries struggle to guarantee a full year-round production of crops because of the harsh weather conditions in cold and hot seasons. Greenhouses are used to mitigate the harsh weather conditions and allow for a full year-round production of crops by controll...

Micromobility is dominant in urban areas, enhancing the transportation sustainability and assisting in fulfilling the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This work provides an overall assessment of micromobility: its role under SDGs, policy options, micromobility regulations, emerging technologies, utilisation determinants, energy...

The digitalization of engineering systems has attracted huge attention in the last years due to its wide benefits on the performance and cost of the overall system. Among these digitalization techniques, digital twins emerge as a potential technique for enhancing performance, lowering maintenance and operation costs, and ensuring safer operation fo...

The rapid growth in the consumption of fossil fuels resulted in climate change and severe health issues. Among the different proposed methods to control climate change, carbon capture technologies are the best choice in the current stage. In this study, the various membrane technologies used for carbon capture and their impact on achieving sustaina...

Hydrogen is a new promising energy source. Three operating parameters, including inlet gas flow rate, pH and impeller speed, mainly determine the biohydrogen production from membrane bioreactor. The work aims to boost biohydrogen production by determining the optimal values of the control parameters. The proposed methodology contains two parts: mod...

Over the past decade, energy demand has witnessed a drastic increase, mainly due to huge development in the industry sector and growing populations. This has led to the global utilization of renewable energy resources and technologies to meet this high demand, as fossil fuels are bound to end and are causing harm to the environment. Solar PV (photo...

Heat pipe systems have attracted increasing attention recently for application in various heat transfer-involving systems and processes. One of the obstacles in implementing heat pipes in many applications is their difficult-to-model operation due to the many parameters that affect their performance. A promising alternative to classical modeling th...

Citation: Rezk, A.; Olabi, A.G.; Alami, A.H.; Radwan, A.; Demir, H.; Rahman, S.M.A.; Shah, S.K.; Abdelkareem, M.A. Experimental Study on Utilizing Silica Gel with Ethanol and Water for Adsorption Heat Storage. Energies 2023, 16, 444. Abstract: Adsorption heat storage is the most feasible technology for heating decarbonization, which can store large...

Fossil fuels are no longer accepted as the sole energy source with their environmental impacts and fluctuating price. Green hydrogen is considered a potential candidate for fossil fuel soon—however, hydrogen is facing the challenges of storage and transportation. Green ammonia, with its ease of transport and storage, is another promising alternativ...

Swift developments in electronic devices and future transportation/energy production directions have forced researchers to develop new and contemporary devices with higher power capacities, extended cycle lives, and superior energy densities. Supercapacitors are promising devices with excellent power densities and exceptionally long cycle lives. Ho...

This work presents findings on utilizing the expansion stage of compressed air energy storage systems for air conditioning purposes. The proposed setup is an ancillary installation to an existing compressed air energy storage setup and is used to produce chilled water at temperatures as low as 5 °C. An experimental setup for the ancillary system ha...

The current pandemic has adversely affected oxygen production and supply chain, where oxygen treatment is essential for the emergency treatment protocol of patients infected by the virus. This work reports on various techniques of oxygen generation methods, as well as the challenges facing its production, storage, and transportation. Moreover, this...

The sudden increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere due to the high dependency on fossil products has created the need for an urgent solution to mitigate this challenge. Global warming, which is a direct result of excessive CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, is one major issue that the world is trying to curb, especia...

The world has heavily relied on fossil fuels for decades to supply energy demands. However, the usage of fossil fuels has been strongly correlated with impactful problems, which lead to global warming. Moreover, the excessive use of fossil fuels has led to their rapid depletion. Hence, exploring other renewable and sustainable alternatives to fossi...

Graphene is fundamentally a two-dimensional material with extraordinary optical, thermal, mechanical, and electrical characteristics. It has a versatile surface chemistry and large surface area. It is a carbon nanomaterial, which comprises sp2 hybridized carbon atoms placed in a hexagonal lattice with one-atom thickness, giving it a two-dimensional...

Nowadays the World faces critical issues, such as increasing power costs, environmental impacts of fossil fuel, and global warming. In this respect, scientists are trying to improve the efficiency of the energy harvesting. The enhancement of power generation sectors is focused on the waste heat recovery systems based on thermoelectric generators (T...

In order to prolong the cycle life of the battery pack for electric vehicles or hybrid electric vehicles, phase change materials (PCMs) are employed effectively for the battery thermal management (BTM) systems. Utilizing the cooling system based on PCMs for BTM can lead to the desired cooling effect yielding the most appropriate temperature distrib...

Nowadays heat pipes are considered to be popular passive heat transfer technologies due to their high thermal performance. The heat pipe is a superior heat transfer apparatus in which latent heat of vaporization is employed to transfer heat for an extended distance under a limited operating temperature difference. Numerical simulation of heat trans...

Ammonia as an energy storage medium is a promising set of technologies for peak shaving due to its carbon-free nature and mature mass production and distribution technologies. In this paper, ammonia energy storage (AES) systems are reviewed and compared with several other energy storage techniques. It is shown that once optimized for commercial use...

This work studies the Calotropis procera, a xerophytic plant of the hyper‐arid hot deserts of the Gulf region, as a model to assess correlations between environmental conditions and photosynthetic efficiency. Plant structure and environmental factors are thoroughly assessed, such as leaf surface orientation, daytime, and photosynthetic photon flux...

Solar photovoltaic technology is a key renewable energy division that has proven effective especially in high solar irradiance regions. However, there the technology faces various operational and technical challenges. This work reviews and discusses recent innovations and research work done on the effect of solar radiation fluctuation, shading, soi...

Energy storage for medium- to large-scale applications is an important aspect of balancing demand and supply cycles. Hydropower generation coupled with pumped hydro storage is an old but effective supply/demand buffer that is a function of the availability of a freshwater resource and the ability to construct an elevated water reservoir. This work...

Electrochemical CO2 reduction has drawn substantial attention not only due to the demand for energy but also the need for a sustainable environment. In this work, a non-noble based electrocatalyst (Cu2O-MoS2) was developed using a facile method for its application in CO2 reduction. The synthesized composite material was characterized using XPS, XRD...

Solar energy has witnessed a rapid development during the past three decades. However not all solar technologies have reached the same level of maturity. Photovoltaic (PV) technologies possess the lion share of development in all technical aspects including materials, output efficiency, prices and mass production. A remarkable decrease in the cost...

This work investigates the synthesis of Fe-Cu bimetallic alloy and its subsequent deposition on aluminum substrates for iron contaminants elimination in aqueous solutions. The sequential processes of synthesis (with grinding balls) and deposition (without balls) are carried out in a single ball mill resulting in a coating at room temperature. Detai...

With the rapid evolution of photovoltaic systems and technologies, many challenges arise in their installation and operation. Since both developed and developing countries have a significant proliferation of solar PV systems both on grid and off grid, suitable technological solutions must be proposed to mitigate such challenges. In this review pape...

Biological plants such as algae have a great potential of fixating CO2 from flue gases or atmospheric air and converting it into useful biomass. This is because CO2 is part of their photosynthesis process where the gas is an essential input ingredient. In this study, a closed system was designed for algae cultivation and carbon capture as a means t...

In this work, natural dye extracts from Calotropis Procera are used as the main dyesensitizer in solar cells. The Calotropis plant is a non-food item capable of surviving the harsh climate of the United Arab Emirates. Its incorporation into dye-sensitized solar cells is tested by constructing various cells, whose performance was also compared to th...

This paper introduces a comprehensive overview of various graphene production and deposition processes with a main focus on their utilization for energy harvesting and augmentation applications. A focused view on simple yet effective mechanical exfoliation techniques to produce graphene, and sometimes simultaneously deposit it. Two of these techniq...

In this paper a manufacturing process is introduced to treat the bulk surfaces of surfaces via graphite powder blasting to directly produce an adherent layer of graphene. Subsequently, the study aims to correlate optical, thermal and electrochemical modifications with treatment parameters such as blasting pressure, nozzle distance and number of pas...

When two streams of different salinities are mixed, Gibbs free energy of mixing is released. This energy can be harvested and further converted to electric energy through the pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) process. Despite several improvements on PRO over the past decades, there still exist several technical issues pertinent to its adequate implem...

This chapter presents a general overview of available mechanical energy storage technologies. Although energy storage is a solemn synonym to chemical batteries, storage options are never limited to them. While electrical energy is the globally preferred form of energy, storing energy in intermediate conversion steps should always be investigated. N...

In this work, the technical feasibility of an all-air vehicle is investigated. A test rig has been built for this purpose in order to assess the proposed system experimentally. The operating pressures selected are deliberately low to mitigate the heat generated/dissipated during charging and discharging of the air cylinders driving an air motor, re...

Over the past years, hydrogen has been identified as the most promising carrier of clean energy. In a world that aims to replace fossil fuels to mitigate greenhouse emissions and address other environmental concerns, hydrogen generation technologies have become a main player in the energy mix. Since hydrogen is the main working medium in fuel cells...

The FeCu alloy system is interesting especially that there exist limited practical procedures to produce tangible interdiffusion between these two basic elements. This work focuses on the high energy ball milling technique to produce the FeCu material, and in some instances, simultaneously deposit them on thin substrates for different applications....

In this work, standalone cobalt dendrites are prepared then doped with graphene flakes by a simple electroplating technique. Microstructural examination using SEM with EDX, as well as Raman spectroscopy measurements, verified the successful formation of graphene. The prepared material exhibit a favorably high electrochemical methanol oxidation acti...