Journal of
Energy Resources
Technology Guest Editorial
Energy Efficiency, Sources and Sustainability
Population and societal growth coupled with technological
progress, have all lead to a rapid increase in energy usage and
consequent depletion of fossil fuel reserves. Although one could
question the credibility of these estimations as supported by the
recent revision in the case of natural gas reserves, the fact that the
worldwide demand will keep on growing unabated leaves no
doubt that the solution is not to procrastinate but to look for al-
ternative sources of energy. At the same time, there is a growing
belief that the use of fossil fuel and the consequent release of
greenhouse gases are mainly responsible for the observed global
warming trend. Hence there is a big push for developing new
sources of clean, alternative energy for replacing the fossil fuels.
In addition, if the source is renewable, that will further help pro-
vide a long term solution. However, one should note that the Sun
is the main source of energy; the energy received from the Sun is
transformed into various sources like solar, wind, ocean, geother-
mal, nuclear, biomass, fossil fuel, etc., over widely differing space
and time scales by mainly ecological and artificial processes. The
term renewable has a spatial and temporal connotation. Hence
what is renewable for one nation or part of the world may not
be renewable and in fact even be available for another part of the
world. Thus energy source has become an important commodity
for survival and progress and has to be evaluated on thermoeco-
nomic and socioeconomic bases. It requires 21st century cutting
edge science, technology and systems for harvesting energy from
the available sources and transforming it efficiently and economi-
cally into electricity, heat or power required for human consump-
tion with minimal perturbation to the ecology. It is also important
to note that the present energy crisis has occurred mainly because
of dependence on only a few sources. Hence this needs to be
addressed not only by exploring and evaluating all possible
sources but also by developing systems for efficient transforma-
tion, storage and distribution of energy. All this involves develop-
ment of technology in all areas and their cross transplantation for
reaching the goal and sustaining the progress.
The continuing public concern and the engineering interest
prompted the Advanced Energy Systems Division AESD of
ASME in collaboration with the Solar Energy Division SED to
start a Conference on Energy Sustainability in 2007. The success
of that conference in meeting the goals of providing a forum for
researchers in universities and research laboratories, and engineers
in industries to present, discuss and disseminate knowledge relat-
ing to energy science and technology prompted organizing the
2008 ASME 2nd International Energy Sustainability Conference
at Jacksonville, FL between Aug. 1014. The papers published in
this issue are amongst a few selected from that Conference and
invited for consideration for publication. They underwent a 2nd
round of peer review for meeting the journal standards.
A large number of papers were presented in the area of energy
efficiency relating to systems, processes and operation, which
covers a large part of this issue also. The paper by Ryu et al.
demonstrates energy savings and storage by using waste heat from
a turbine to drive a vapor absorption refrigeration system supply-
ing two loads including an off peak ice making system to store
Journal of Energy Resources Technology Copyright 2010 by ASME
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energy during off peak hours for utilizing it during peak demand,
thus enabling load balancing of the distributed energy system.
Cohen et al. have proposed a technique for optimizing the opera-
tion of coal based electric power plants by turning the emission
reduction system on and off depending on load, thus reducing the
cost of electricity while keeping the cost of operation and the total
plant emission also under control. The paper by Mahmoud et al.
describes techniques for detailed modeling of leakage and friction
in rotary expanders for estimating the inefficiency caused by those
mechanisms. Luckow et al. demonstrate the potential of polymers
as efficient and economical material for application in seawater
methane heat exchangers that could be used in the liquefaction of
natural gas on offshore platforms by considering the energy re-
quired for manufacturing also. Similarly, the paper by Shah et al.
suggests a method of assessing exergy consumed during the com-
plete life cycle for designing heat exchangers starting from scratch
rather than accounting for energy wasted during operation or func-
tioning of the component only.
There are three papers dealing with thermoeconomic analysis of
hydrogen as well as coal to liquid CTL production technologies.
Zhu et al. have applied detailed exergy analysis to evaluate and
optimize various CTL technologies for system performance im-
provement. Harwego et al. not only present useful information for
selection of the type of infrastructure required for realizing the
green dreams of hydrogen economy but also provide baseline data
for the cost of producing hydrogen using high temperature elec-
trolysis, which appears to compete reasonably well with other
methods like steam-methane reforming, which results in produc-
tion of the unwanted CO2 also. Lubis et al. have reported a de-
tailed life cycle including environmental impact analysis of hy-
drogen production by thermochemical water splitting using the
copperchlorine cycle. They have concluded that the main envi-
ronmental impact occurs during the construction phase of the
nuclear and thermochemical plants and improvement in construc-
tion processes/techniques are required for mitigation of such im-
pact.
Finally, Fonk et al., in their paper have made use of the present
estimates of population, renewable and nonrenewable energy con-
sumption, expected growth rates of population as well as per
capita energy consumption to estimate the required growth rates
of the renewable energy resources like biomass, solar, wind and
geothermal for maintaining a sustainable energy future. Such as-
sessments are essential for future planning of energy sustainabil-
ity.
I would like to thank all authors for submitting their research
work to the special issue of this journal. In addition, I am grateful
to the members of the panel listed below, who readily agreed to
contribute their time and expertise for reviewing the papers. Fi-
nally my thanks are due to Dr. Sriram Somasundaram, a General
Chair for the Conference who supported the publication of this
issue and to Dr. Andrew Wojtanowicz, Editor of this journal, with-
out whose help, along with that of his Editorial Assistant, Ms.
Janet Dugas, it would not have been possible to bring out this
special issue.
JUNE 2010, Vol. 132 / 020301-1
 Review Panel
Professor Abel Hernandez Guerrero, Universidad de Guanajuato, Salamanca, Mexico
Professor Antonio Bula,Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia
Professor George Tsatsaronis, Technische Universitt Berlin, Germany
Professor James Menart, Wright State University, Dayton, OH
Professor Reinhard Radermacher, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Professor Yogi Goswami, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL

Dr. B. G. Shiva Prasad

Guest Editor
Wright State University,
Dayton, OH
e-mail: bellur.shivaprasad@wright.edu

020301-2 / Vol. 132, JUNE 2010 Transactions of the ASME

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