Energy poverty, defined as a lack of access to reliable electricity and reliance on traditional biomass resources for cooking, affects over a billion people daily. The World Health Organization estimates that household air pollution from inefficient stoves causes more premature deaths than malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. Increasing demand for energy has led to dramatic increases in emissions. The need for reliable electricity and limiting emissions drives research on Resilient Hybrid Energy Systems (RHESs), which provide cleaner energy through combining wind, solar, and biomass energy with traditional fossil energy, increasing production efficiency and reliability and reducing generating costs and emissions. Microgrids have been shown as an efficient means of implementing RHESs, with some focused mainly on reducing the environmental impact of electric power generation. The technical challenges of designing, implementing, and applying microgrids involve conducting a cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to evaluate these systems’ environmental and economic performance under diverse operating conditions to evaluate resiliency. A sample RHES was developed and used to demonstrate the implementation in rural applications, where the system can provide reliable electricity for heating, cooling, lighting, and pumping clean water. The model and findings can be utilized by other regions around the globe facing similar challenges.

Energy poverty, defined as a lack of access to reliable electricity and reliance on traditional biomass resources for cooking, affects over a billion people daily. The World Health Organization estimates that household air pollution from inefficient stoves causes more premature deaths than malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS). Increasing demand for energy has led to dramatic increases in carbon emissions. The need for reliable electricity and limiting carbon emissions drives research on Resil-ient Hybrid Energy Systems (RHES) that provide low-carbon energy through combined wind, so-lar, and biomass energy with traditional fossil energy, increasing production efficiency and relia-bility, and reducing generating costs and carbon emissions. Microgrids have been shown as an ef-ficient means of implementing RHES, with some focused mainly on reducing the environmental impact of electric power generation. The technical challenges of designing, implementing and ap-plying microgrids involve conducting a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate these systems' environmental and economic performance under diverse operating conditions to evaluate resiliency. A sample RHES has been developed and used to demonstrate implementation in rural applications. This system can provide reliable electricity for heating, cooling, lighting, and pumping clean water. This paper's primary focus is the challenges of using resilient energy sys-tems in the Middle East.

This paper aims at reviewing and analyzing the operation and design of a utility flare in an oilfield in the Iraq/Kurdistan region. The flare supports a gas separation unit that separates 100 MMSCFD of natural gas from other liquid compounds in petroleum refining. The actual flare dimensions are 50 m high and 0.6 m diameter and works in summer where the crosswind speed is 9 m/s and a flow of 1.2 MMSCFD of treated natural gas is flaring through it. At the beginning, the flare design was performed using the API-521 recommended approach based on full operating capacity of the unit and composition of the gas to be flared. The API-521 based design resulted in a flare with a 0.76 m diameter and 48.19 m height. The effects of stack height on heat radiation in case of full capacity firing showed that as the flare height increases from 42.34 m to 133.05 m, the heat radiation decreases from 15.8 kW/m^2 to 1.6 kW/m^2 within 45.7 m dimeter. Furthermore, the relation between stack height and heat radiation was studied for the actual firing rate 1.2MMSCFD using simulation, where the results showed that as the stack height increasing from 10 m to 50 m the heat radiation decreasing from over 1000 w/m^2 to around 150 W/m^2. In fact, CFD code C3d was used to analyze flare performance at normal firing condition during summer operation of 1.2 MMSCFD with a flare diameter and height of 50 m and 0.6 m, respectively. The code was able to predict the flame shape and size during actual flare operation. The results of the simulation demonstrated by defining four locations in the domain to measure the average temperatures and emissions, and to calculate the Combustion Efficiency (CE) and Destruction and Removal Efficiency (DRE). These points were 6 m, 8 m, 10 m, 12 m far from the tip on x-axis and at height of 52 m. The results showed that the average temperature at 6 m far from the flare is 658 K and it decreasing to 490 K at 12 m away from the tip. The CO and CO2 also decreased from 7.27E-5 and 0.033 mass% to 4.53E-6 and 0.027 mass%, respectively. Generally, soot formation was low but at points 8 m and 10 m from the tip the soot formation was considerably lower, respectively at 6.16E-5 and 8.71E-5 mass%. The emissions of C1, C2, C3 and C6+ were measured at 7.46E-9, 5.39E-9, 5.13E-9 and 4.35E-9 mass% at 6 m away from the tip. The emissions increased slightly at 8 m and 10 m from the tip but at 12 m they were observed to decrease. The flare CE and DRE were estimated to be 98% and 100%, respectively. Analysis results confirmed that the flare design was safe and the flare operation was highly efficient with very little smoke produced as indicated by the predicted CE and DRE.

Molecular sieves are used over a wide range of applications in industries especially in petroleum and gas processing plants. There is a huge amount, tenths of tons to be disposed annually by oil and gas companies, sometimes in a non-safe way. These materials when they are disposed under non regulations, it will have harmful impact on the environment. In Iraq, these materials are disposed unsafely and there are no procedures and regulations that are imposed for safe handling and managing of them. This being the case, in this study the spent molecular sieves from North Gas Company (NGC) used to replace the ordinary Portland cement(OPC) in the process of concrete production. Based on the compressive strength test results of the concrete the spent molecular sieves can be used to replace the OPC by up to 15% of spent molecular sieves. The concrete specimens are well complies with the Iraqi Standard IQS 5:1984. Moreover, this method can be more cost-efficient than conventional disposal and land filling process for this type of solid wastes.

Recently, flares have been considered as a major source of air pollution from the petroleum refining industry. The United Nations has instigated an international effort related to the management of flare emissions to reduce the global warming impact related to flaring. Eliminating or removing the need for gas flares is difficult because these devices are generally used as safety devices to allow the combustion of flammable gases in a controlled fashion which supports safe operation. However, reducing flaring is generally possible using well-designed, efficiently operated flare equipment. In general, flare performance can be enhanced following the API-521 methodology and using assist-media including air and steam to achieve smokeless operation. This present work will discuss flare emissions in the petroleum refining industry and a method to manage flare emissions. Moreover, this work will discuss flare combustion efficiency (CE) and destruction and removal efficiency (DRE) in terms of efficient flare operation. This work uses actual operating flare data, published previously, which will be used in this work together with the CFD Code C3d. This code, developed at the USDOE Sandia National Laboratory, is based on a standard LES methodology to conduct transient flare analysis and is used to simulate flare operation to estimate flame shape and emissions produced. In this work, a new air-assisted flare tip design which uses the Coanda effect to improve flare operation was analyzed. This new flare design reduces the emission rate and demonstrates the design’s effectiveness. The analysis considers a flare 39″ high and 6″ diameter in the center of a 4m x 4m x 4m domain. Boundary conditions assume no cross wind and an ambient temperature of 300 K. The initial condition is a hydrostatic pressure profile across the computational domain. In the air-assist simulation, stoichiometric ratio will be a variable, and therefore, more than one case was considered.