Global climate change poses a challenge to the mineral development industry in the Arctic regions. Civil and industrial buildings designed and constructed without consideration of warming factors are beginning to collapse due to changes in the permafrost structure. St. Petersburg Mining University is developing technical and technological solutions for the construction of remote Arctic facilities and a methodology for their design based on physical and mathematical predictive modeling. The article presents the results of modeling the thermal regimes of permafrost soils in conditions of thermal influence of piles and proposes measures that allow a timely response to the loss of bearing capacity of piles. Designing pile foundations following the methodology proposed in the article to reduce the risks from global climate change will ensure the stability of remote Arctic facilities located in the zone of permafrost spreading.

The article deals with the issue of thermal stabilization of soils to preserve the stability of pile foundations in permafrost conditions. The purpose of the work is to develop a technology for year-round freezing of soils by supplying coolant cooled by a refrigeration machine to thermal elements placed inside piles. In this work, the temperature regime of the system "pile foundation – soil" in the stationary formulation of the problem was simulated, and the influence of the depth of placement of thermal elements inside the piles on the soil temperature was investigated. The simulation was performed in the COMSOL software environment, taking into account the heat transfer due to thermal conduction and convection. In the presented model, a platform is fixed on piles, and a heat source is placed on the platform. It is found that an area of thawed soil has formed on the leeward side of the pile foundation. It is concluded that, under certain conditions, deep thermal elements for freezing or keeping the soil frozen should be placed at different depths. Thus, under given conditions, a greater depth of the thermal element placement in the pile, closest to the soil thawing zone, allows to reduce the surface temperature of the pile below ground level and, therefore, increase its bearing capacity. The authors also propose an original unit for soil thermostabilization based on the absorption cooling machine, which can operate at the expense of thermal energy generated by technological sources located on the platform. Doi: 10.28991/CEJ-2023-09-04-013 Full Text: PDF

This article discusses methods of enhanced power generation using a binary power system with low-boiling fluid as an intermediate energy carrier. The binary power system consists of micro-gas and steam power units and is intended for remote standalone power supply. Trifluotrichloroethane was considered as the working agent of the binary cycle. The developed system was modeled by two parts in MATLAB Simulink and Aspen HYSYS. The model in Aspen HYSYS calculates the energy and material balance of the binary energy system. The model in MATLAB Simulink investigates the operation of power electronics in the energy system for quality power generation. The results of the simulation show that the efficiency of power generation in the range of 100 kW in the developed system with micro-turbine power units reaches 50%.