Massimiliano Renzi

Massimiliano Renzi
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano | Unibolzano · Faculty of Science and Technology

PhD Energy - Fluid machines and energy conversion systems

About

146
Publications
41,151
Reads
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2,463
Citations
Introduction
Use of novel green fuels for combustion engines and thermal power production. Hybrid mobility solutions, vehicle thermal management, battery thermal management. Mini and micro hydropower: Pump as Turbines, Pumped hydro Energy storage Optimization techniques for optimal management of hybrid energy systems. Hydrogen and batteries for energy transition.
Additional affiliations
November 2007 - December 2010
Marche Polytechnic University
Position
  • PhD Student
October 2013 - present
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
Position
  • Lecturer
Description
  • Thermal Engines Course (taught in English)
September 2013 - present
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
Position
  • Lecturer
Description
  • Fluid Machines Course (taught in English)
Education
November 2007 - October 2010
Marche Polytechnic University
Field of study
  • Ph.D. in Energy
October 2005 - July 2007
Marche Polytechnic University
Field of study
  • Thermomechanical Engineering
October 2002 - July 2005
Marche Polytechnic University
Field of study
  • Mechanical Engineering

Publications

Publications (146)
Article
Full-text available
One of the technical possibilities to enhance the properties of lubricants and biolubricants is dispersing nanoparticles in them. Although conceptually simple, this operation faces challenges related to: (1) obtaining an initial good dispersion of the nanoparticles in the liquid and (2) ensuring the stability of this dispersion to avoid coalescence...
Article
Full-text available
In the context of the current energy transition, the use of biomass-derived syngas (BDS) is often recognized as a fundamental path towards decreasing fossil fuel dependency and greenhouse gas emissions. However, hydrogen-containing BDS are prone to flame instability problems. More efforts are being carried out aiming at efficiently adopting BDS in...
Conference Paper
The increasing global demand for energy and the need to reduce polluting emissions necessitate the use of alternative fuels, especially in the hard-to-abate sectors, that are more critical from an environmental standpoint. Ammonia is considered as a promising carrier of green hydrogen and as a renewable carbon-free fuel, therefore, it is anticipate...
Article
Full-text available
The need for the decarbonization of heavy-duty vehicles requires a deep understanding about the effects of biofuels, which represent a viable pathway to cut the emissions in the hard-to-abate sectors, like agricultural tractors. A novel meta-analysis approach can help to thoroughly investigate the effects of biodiesel blends on farm tractor engines...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This work aims at supplying some fundamental insights of producer gas combustion and it is developed in the framework of the Green Deal project FRONTSH1P. To this aim, an in-house designed combustion chamber is directly coupled with a fluidized bed gasifier operated with wood packaging waste (e.g., disused pallets). Stable combustion process of pro...
Article
Full-text available
The environmental sustainability of agricultural and industrial vehicles, as well as of the transportation sector, represents one of the most critical challenges to the sustainable development of a nation. In recent decades, compression-ignition engines have been widely used in on-road and off road vehicles due to their better fuel economy, autonom...
Article
Sustainable use of water and energy sources is a crucial challenge for smart and resilient urban water infrastructure. At this aim, this study presents a methodology for implementing and selecting pumps-as-turbines (PaTs) in water distribution networks (WDNs) to minimise leakage losses and maximise energy recovery. A novel dynamic control algorithm...
Article
Full-text available
The Arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (ALE-SPH) formulation can guarantee stable solutions preventing the adoption of empirical parameters such as artificial viscosity. However, the convergence rate of the ALE-SPH formulation is still limited by the inaccuracy of the SPH spatial operators. In this work, a Weighted Essent...
Chapter
The water industry is facing significant challenges due to the effects of climate change and energy crises. To address these issues, the water sector is undergoing a digital transformation, leveraging digital technologies and methods, such as artificial intelligence and smart sensors, to improve sustainable supply, distribution, and treatment of wa...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose of Review Electrification is the second major shift in the type of drivetrain technology employed in cable yarding equipment, after the gradual transition from mechanical to hydraulic drives that began in the 1960 s. Electric slack pulling carriages are omnipresent today and more advanced electrified solutions are close to market entry. Few...
Chapter
Full-text available
Recent regulations on greenhouse emissions and pollutants are forcing forestry machinery companies to target new solutions for limiting emissions while maintaining performance through electrification or hybridization. Moreover, thanks to the availability of new and affordable mechatronic and IoT technologies, concepts such as sustainable, smart, an...
Article
Full-text available
The presented work is developed in the framework of the Green Deal project FRONTSH1P; in particular, it is related to the task “CSS1 – A circular approach to wood packaging waste” which includes activities related to the coupling of an updraught direct‐current commercial stationary fluidized bed gasifier operating with wood packaging waste (e.g., d...
Article
The energy transition is pushing towards a considerable diffusion of local energy communities based on renewable energy systems and coupled with energy storage systems or energy vectors to provide independence from fossil fuels and limit carbon emissions. Indeed, the variable and intermittent nature of renewables make them inadequate to satisfy the...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In this work, chemical kinetic simulations of equimolar (CO:H2=1:1) based forestry residual syngas were systematically performed adapting the laminar premixed flame model in open source CANTERA, solver. Three detailed kinetic models i.e., newly released FFCM-2, USC mech II, and modified GRI mech III were incorporated to report accurate flame parame...
Article
Full-text available
The constant availability of water from the mountain basins is crucial to feed the hydropower plants that currently represent the most important renewable energy source in many countries, like Italy. The long dry periods that are nowadays registered during the summer periods have imposed the managers of the hydropower plants to operate the machines...
Article
Full-text available
Radical changes are necessary to address challenges related to global warming and pollution. Ever-tightening emission standards for combustion engines have already led to a drastic reduction in the amount of harmful gas and matter emitted. Drivetrain hybridization and electrification, which are becoming increasingly popular in all sectors, are two...
Article
In this article, the performance of a micro gas turbine (mGT) and a supercritical CO2 (sCO2) system fuelled by a biomass gasifier and with similar nominal net power output is compared. Both plants include a bottoming organic Rankine cycle system to maximise the electrical power output. Using a component-oriented, off-design modelling approach a sen...
Article
Energy production from clean sources is mandatory to reduce pollutant emissions. Among different options for hidden hydropower potential exploitation, Pump-as-Turbine (PaT) represents a viable solution in pico- and micro-hydropower applications for its flexibility and low-cost. Pumps are widely available in the global market in terms of both sizes...
Article
A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords: Battery energy storage system Local energy community Hydrogen storage system Off-grid operation Seasonal storage Small-scale hydropower A B S T R A C T The energy transition is pushing towards a considerable diffusion of local energy communities based on renewable energy systems and coupled with energy storage system...
Article
Full-text available
Meeting ever-tightening emission regulations and ambitious climate targets requires drastic efficiency improvements and emission reduction across all sectors. Hybridization as an intermediary step towards electrification is a prominent approach to achieve this. Within the forestry sector, most equipment still relies on conventional mechanical or hy...
Conference Paper
div class="section abstract"> Vehicle electrification is bringing new challenges to the design of components for the automotive sector. New system requirements and functions are forcing either the development of new components or a complete redesign of the existing ones. In the absence of detailed pre-existing knowledge on operating conditions for...
Article
Full-text available
Mechanised agriculture accounts for nearly 70 million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually. To mitigate these CO2 emissions, powertrains running on alternative fuels and hybrid powertrains are under development. However, such solutions have not yet reached the technical maturity required for the marketplace. To make significant progress, considering th...
Article
Full-text available
Electric and hybrid vehicles are two of the most promising solutions to meet the new emission requirements of the transportation sector. The energy storage system is their most critical component in terms of performance. Therefore, battery modeling plays an important role for designing and controlling battery modules. Up to now, the design of batte...
Conference Paper
Hydraulic machines are currently becoming of interest to enhance the small-scale hydropower potential and perform energy recovery as well. One of the most interesting applications is the use of simple and low-cost turbines in mountain weirs that have not been fully exploited yet. A critical issue in these applications is the risk of strong atmosphe...
Article
Full-text available
The (partial or total) substitution of petro-diesel with biodiesel in internal combustion engines (ICEs) could represent a crucial path towards the decarbonization of the energy sector. However, critical aspects are related to the controversial issue of the possible increase in Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) emissions. In such a framework, the proposed stud...
Conference Paper
The exploitation of residual water flows represents a possible solution to exploit the hidden hydropower potential. The installation of hydraulic machines with peculiar features in small flows could help exploiting this additional hydropower potential. However, the hydraulic machines used in such locations must be simple and cost-effective. This wo...
Article
Agricultural tractors may idle from 10 to 43% of their entire operating life and this inoperative time must be minimised because it is detrimental to the environment, public health, fuel economy, and engine lifespan (Perozzi et al., 2016). On passenger cars, start and stop (SS) systems have been extensively used, but they are not currently installe...
Article
Full-text available
The exploitation of wind energy potential has been strongly limited in the Mediterranean area due to its critical bathymetry. However, the spread of new deep offshore technologies such as floating turbines could drastically change the actual scenario, allowing wind energy to be exploited even in areas with critical bathymetric conditions. In such f...
Article
This paper presents a method to evaluate the economic feasibility of tractor powertrain electrification based on life cycle cost analysis. For a parallel hybrid, the best combustion engine downsizing, among some discrete values, was evaluated. The methodology was applied to three case studies with different power levels and operating cycles: a 76 k...
Article
Full-text available
Today, agriculture industry has a significant impact in global greenhouse gas emissions. A large amount of pollutants come from diesel internal combustion engines, widely used in agricultural machinery. Since mechanization in agriculture is fundamental to achieve a proper food production for a growing human population, changes are needed in common...
Article
Full-text available
This work suggests an interpretation to the quantitatively higher formation of NOx in a compression ignition (CI) engine when fueled with pure biodiesel (B100). A comparative study about the use of rapeseed oil methyl ester (RME) and diesel fuel mixtures on injection timing, in-chamber pressure, heat release rate, and NOx emissions were carried out...
Conference Paper
The temperature of the exhaust gases can easily be correlated to the torque that an internal combustion engine is instantaneously delivering. Therefore, the temperature measurement is a concrete and viable possibility for indirectly quantifying the performance of agricultural machinery, even in terms of retrofitting, if the considered farm tractor...
Article
Despite the massive electrification of the energy sector, combustion-based technologies will continue to play a key role for decades to come. Therefore, to meet the ambitious target of decarbonization of the energy sector, adapting current technologies to alternative energy sources, like biofuels, is a must. The proposed work aims at investigating...
Article
Full-text available
This paper studies the convergence properties of an arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) Riemann-based SPH algorithm in conjunction with a Weighted Essentially Non-Oscillatory (WENO) high-order spatial reconstruction, in the framework of the DualSPHysics open-source code. A convergence analysis is carried out for Lagrangian and Eulerian simulations...
Article
Energy efficiency interventions in Water Supply Systems (WSSs) need a precise evaluation of the available water flow rates for energy recovery interventions; however, flow meters are generally too costly for being installed in all the gravity adduction pipelines of a WSS. This paper presents a methodology for predicting flow rates in gravity adduct...
Article
The partial replacement of conventional fuels with “bio-based” fuels represents a viable energy strategy for cleaner distributed-power generation (agricultural/co-generative units). Although internal combustion engines represent a well-established technology, they will continue to play a crucial role in this energy revolution thanks to their flexib...
Article
Full-text available
Power generation units based on the bio-syngas system face two main challenges due to (i) the possible temporary shortage of primary sources and (ii) the engine power derating associated with the use of low-energy density fuels in combustion engines. In both cases, an external input fuel is provided. Hence, complementing syngas with traditional fue...
Conference Paper
Computational fluid dynamics represent a powerful tool to assess the performance of a combustor and identify possible issues/instabilities, helping thus e.g. to investigate the impact of advanced cycle modifications on the combustion in mGTs. The steady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach is still mostly used in this framework. With gro...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Hydropower is an important energy sector deployed all over the World with a significant share in the global electricity production. Due to the ongoing climate changes, the lack of water in summer periods compromises the performance of hydraulic machines, whose efficiency quickly decreases when they operate at strong part-load conditions. Among the...
Article
In this work, an electro-thermal model of a single lithium-ion battery cell has been developed in Simulink-Simscape environment. The model is divided in two interacting parts: the electrical and the thermal one. The electrical model consists of one Resistor-Capacitor branch circuit that is coupled to a thermal model consisting of a discretized volu...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Measuring the performance of the compression-ignition internal combustion engine of agricultural machines (in particular, the torque delivered instantaneously) is an essential requirement for monitoring: (a)the exploitation of the engine mechanical-energy potential (in terms of generated torque) and (b)its correct operation (in terms of global effi...
Article
Management strategies of complex energy systems composed by different technologies is mandatory to exploit optimally the characteristics of each power generator, to reduce the cost of energy, the impact of greenhouse gases emissions and to increase the penetration of mini- and micro-grids into energy systems. To this purpose, optimization methods a...
Article
Full-text available
A truly universal system to optimize consumptions, monitor operation and predict maintenance interventions for internal combustion engines must be independent of onboard systems, if present. One of the least invasive methods of detecting engine performance involves the measurement of the exhaust gas temperature (EGT), which can be related to the in...
Article
Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) from energy intensive industries has a great potential in curbing CO2 emissions. Among the different solutions, District Heating (DH) is considered of major interest, satisfying the heating demand of users in the proximity of power plants. Considering the energy intensity of the pulp and paper industry, a methodology for e...
Article
Full-text available
Li-ion cells are one of the core components for the actual and future electric mobility. Differently from other types of applications and due to the high charge/discharge rates, the thermal-related issues in batteries for mobility are drastically relevant and can affect the reliability, the safety and the performance of the system. Indeed, limited...
Article
Energy recovery solutions reduce considerably the carbon footprint of Water Supply Systems (WSSs), which accounts for a large share of the energy demand in urban areas. The evaluation of the potential saving requires the availability of water flow rate and net head values in WSSs pipelines; however, this task is not always achievable since flow met...
Article
Full-text available
Small-scale hybrid energy systems are often composed by different power production technologies and adopted in mini-grids. In this work, a Mixed Integer Linear Programming optimization algorithm has been developed to compute the optimal scheduling of a micro-grid constituted by Internal Combustion Generators (ICGs) and a Storage System that can be...
Conference Paper
Small-scale energy systems like mini-grids and energy islands can rely on different power production technologies aimed at granting a reliable and efficient energy supply. The implementation of proper management strategies is fundamental to control their operations, reduce the operational costs, control the connection to the grid, as well as increa...
Conference Paper
In this paper, the authors analyze the feasibility of fuelling a small-scale 3.2 kWe MGT, manufactured by the Dutch company MTT, with a low LHV fuel produced via a gasification process. In particular, a CFD analysis on the combustor of the MGT is carried out in order to assess the behaviour of the component when it is fuelled with a traditional fue...
Article
The replacement of fossil fuels for producing energy with renewable sources is crucial to limit the climate change effects. However, the unpredictable nature of renewables, like sun and wind, complicates their integration within the power systems. This problem can be faced with the introduction of Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems (HRESs) where sever...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
As opposed to gasoline, diesel oil has a lower limit temperature for its use in internal combustion engines (ICEs), which ranges between-7 ºC and-20 ºC for the summer/winter formulation: it is therefore close to the average winter temperature typical of some European countries. In approaching such temperature, the formation of paraffins alters the...
Article
This work presents a model based on analytical equations to identify the Best Efficiency Point (BEP) of Pumps-as-Turbines (PaTs). The equations are developed exploiting an experimental data-set of 59 PaTs, obtained in both pump and turbine modes, in form of non-dimensional parameters. Data analysis shows a linear correlation between specific speeds...
Article
Chemical plants like oil refineries involve energy intensive processes. Several energy efficiency interventions are being performed in oil refineries to meet the latest emission targets, but few of them are related to the energy recovery from process liquids. In this paper, an energy recovery study of an Italian oil refinery is presented: specifica...
Article
This work presents a detailed analysis of the three-dimensional flows in a Pump-as-Turbine (PaT). The flow field is studied through URANS simulations and a velocity vector analysis. Moreover, a prediction model is used to forecast the performance of the PaT. The results of these methodologies were validated using experimental results. Flow rate and...
Chapter
The Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is used here to analyse a large set of experimental data regarding the mechanical and environmental performances of an internal combustion engine (ICE) used to power a farm tractor. The aim is twofold: (i) to demonstrate the effectiveness of RSM in quantitatively assessing the effects of biofuels on a complex...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The exploitation of renewable energy sources through sustainable energy technologies are taking the field to decrease the pollutions’ emissions into the Earth’s environment. To offset the limitations of such resources, hybrid energy systems are becoming fundamental in grid-connected applications as well as in off-grid ones. However, the unsteady be...
Article
Full-text available
The use of Pumps-as-Turbines (PaTs) to replace hydraulic turbines as energy-recovery units in industrial and civil applications is widening the penetration of hydropower in small-scale plants. PaTs show advantages in terms of installation costs and the availability of solutions. Water Distribution Networks (WDNs) represent a potential application w...
Article
This paper analyses an energy recovery solution based on the Pump-as-Turbine (PaT) technology applied in an oil refinery. Since under-ground water might be contaminated by the chemical processes, an intervention named “Pump & Treat” was adopted in the studied oil refinery to reclaim the installation site and to safeguard the zones nearby. After the...
Article
In this work, an extensive assessment of a predicting model used to evaluate Pumps-as-Turbines’ (PaTs) characteristic curves is presented, with specific attention to the off-design operating conditions. The novelty of the proposed model consists in the possibility to reconstruct the performance curves of a PaT only by knowing a limited number of op...
Article
In this work a small-scale non-regenerative Organic Rankine Cycle test rig has been developed to experimentally assess the performance of the scroll compressor SANDEN TRS090 converted into an expander. The performance of the expander has been evaluated using R245fa as working fluid in terms of overall efficiency and filling factor under variable fl...