Wind is an emerging renewable energy resource, but more useful in cold regions. With the increasing threat of climate change and global warming, the unpredictability of wind energy patterns has been affected. With continual threats from extremes and uncertainties, icing on wind turbines has been noted to grow affecting aerodynamic performance. The effect of turbulence intensity at its impact on aerodynamic performance was numerically done using ANSYS Fluent and FENSAP ICE software. Conditions considered for the study included turbulence intensities, median volume diameter (MVD), liquid water content (LWC), angle of attack, and ambient temperature for 180 min. The study's conditions aimed at providing a wide range of effects covering the in-cloud icing and freezing drizzle. The mass of ice increased with an increase in LWC when it increased from 0.05 g/m³ to 0.3 g/m³, and MVD with 1000 μm compared to 40 μm, but when temperature decreased led to an increase from -1 °C to -15 °C. Increasing the angle of attack led to reduced aerodynamic performance with stall angle occurring at α = 0-18°. An increase in the turbulence intensity from 0.01 % to 50 % resulted in decreased C_L/C_D.

Indoor air pollution is an environmental health challenge in Kenya, particularly in rural households, and low-income urban areas. This review aims to provide an overview of the sources, health effects and mitigation strategies for indoor air pollutants in Kenya. The main goal of our study was to review existing literature on indoor air pollution in Kenya with the aim of identifying research gaps for future research. Our methodology involved a critical examination of the existing literature review. This is because traditional fuel burning for cooking and heating, and kerosene lamps are major sources of indoor air pollution. Exposure to air pollutants can lead to respiratory and cardiovascular disease among women and children who are more vulnerable. Despite efforts to improve indoor air quality, significant challenges remain including access to clean fuels and technologies, inadequate infrastructure, and low awareness of health impact of indoor air pollution. Mitigation strategies include the transition to cleaner cooking sources, solar lamps for lighting and education campaigns on health impacts. The review concludes that a multifaceted approach involving various stakeholders is necessary to effectively address indoor air pollution in Kenya and improve public health.

This paper presents a numerical study of icing of a NACA2412 airfoil and the aerodynamic performance of the airfoil with ice accretion. The study analyzes the effects of liquid water content, accretion time and varying angles of attack (AoA) up to 20⁰ on ice accretion and, consequently, on the aerodynamic coefficients of the airfoil. The free stream velocity and air temperature were kept constant in the simulations. Results revealed that the ratio of lift and drag coefficients was the highest after a short accretion time (i.e., about 20 minutes), but then it decreased significantly with accretion time. Ice accretion increased with time; its mass was the greatest at 10⁰ of AoA. The results can be beneficial for designing blade shapes to optimize wind turbine performance during adverse weather conditions.

Wind turbine performance in cold regions is affected by icing which can lead to power reduction due to the aerodynamic degradation of the turbine blade. The development of airfoil shapes applied as blade sections contributes to improving the aerodynamic performance under a wide range of weather conditions. The present study considers inverse design coupled with numerical modelling to simulate the effects of varying airfoil thickness and maximum camber. The inverse design process was implemented in MATLAB R2023a, whereas the numerical models were constructed using ANSYS Fluent and FENSAP ICE 2023 R1. The inverse design process applied the modified Garabedian–McFadden (MGM) iterative technique. Shear velocities were calculated from the flow over an airfoil with slip conditions, and then this velocity distribution was modified according to the prevailing icing conditions to obtain the target velocities. A parameter was proposed to consider the airfoil thickness as well when calculating the target velocities. The airfoil generated was then exposed to various atmospheric conditions to check the improvement in the aerodynamic performance. The ice mass and lift-to-drag ratio were determined considering cloud characteristics under varying liquid water content (LWC) from mild to severe (0.1 g/m³ to 1 g/m³), median volume diameter (MVD) of 50 µm, and two ambient temperatures (−4 °C and −20 °C) that characterize freezing drizzle and in-cloud icing conditions. The ice mass on the blade section was not significantly impacted by modifying the shape after applying the process developed (i.e., <5%). However, the lift-to-drag ratio that describes the aerodynamic performance may even be doubled in the icing scenarios considered.