Papers by Marco Dell'Isola
18th International Congress of Metrology, 2017
Humidity is a key parameter in controlling drying processes and ambient conditions in many indust... more Humidity is a key parameter in controlling drying processes and ambient conditions in many industrial manufacturing, storage and test applications. Air humidity is routinely measured at temperatures above 100 °C and at conditions that are often challenging due to temporal and local variations. Calibrations of humidity sensors do not provide appropriate representativeness of measurement conditions because they are limited to temperatures below 100 °C and static conditions. A European metrology research project HIT ("Metrology for Humidity at High Temperatures and Transient conditions") is developing improved humidity measurement and calibration techniques to temperatures up to 180 °C and non-static conditions. This paper summaries developments of the project: calibration and test facilities for industrial hygrometers, studies on humidity control in specific microbial transient processes and a new measurement approach for water activity measurements. .
Volume 8: Energy Systems: Analysis, Thermodynamics and Sustainability; Sustainable Products and Processes, 2008
The interest for energy recovery from waste incineration has increased over the years, in order t... more The interest for energy recovery from waste incineration has increased over the years, in order to reduce the number of landfills and produce electricity and heat. At the same time, concern for the impact such processes have on the environment has also grown, and to reduce such an impact, new legislation is being enforced in Europe and Italy. In particular, important restrictions are imposed on the temperature of the exhausts in the combustion chamber, which must be kept above certain values for a given period of time, depending on the type of waste that is being incinerated. Such conditions can be rather difficult and certainly very expensive to monitor with acceptable accuracy. For this reason, in practical applications the temperature of the exhausts in the chamber is usually calculated through semi-empirical and approximate models that relate the temperatures in different sections of the chamber. In this work, the authors present a numerical approach for the analysis of such mod...
17th International Congress of Metrology, 2015
Flow Measurement and Instrumentation, Apr 1, 2023
International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Jul 22, 2016
The energy efficiency directive 2012/27/EU (EED) requires that final users in multi-apartment bui... more The energy efficiency directive 2012/27/EU (EED) requires that final users in multi-apartment buildings supplied by common central heating source should be provided by 31 December 2016 with accounting systems, as long as technical feasibility and reasonable costs in relation to the potential energy savings can be demonstrated. Such systems would reflect users actual thermal energy consumption. The typical configuration of Italian multiapartment buildings implies quite expensive installation costs and sometimes even prevents the installation for technical reasons. Coherently with EED, in such cases alternative cost-efficient methods for heat accounting should be adopted, such as indirect methods. This study assesses the economic and technical feasibility of the most common heat accounting systems. In this paper, after a brief analysis of the different approaches adopted in EU member states, the authors present a cost/benefit analysis that considers the main capital and running costs of individual heat accounting systems with respect to the potential energy savings achievable.
Sensors, Mar 14, 2023
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Journal of physics, Apr 1, 2021
In this paper the authors present a 0D-3D approach for numerical modelling of a waste-to-energy p... more In this paper the authors present a 0D-3D approach for numerical modelling of a waste-to-energy plant located in Italy in different operating conditions. This innovative methodology combines a 0D lumped parameters model, able to describe the processes of solid and gaseous combustion and the heat transfer within the first radiant channel, with a detailed 3D CFD simulation of the thermo-fluid-dynamic field within the plant combustion chamber. Results from the 0D model allow the definition of input data and boundary conditions for detailed 3D CFD simulation of the thermo-fluid-dynamic field within the plant combustion chamber. In this way, the T2S temperature can be determined according to actual definition of European legislation. The developed numerical tool is generally applicable to any waste-to-energy plant, and is here applied for the characterization of different operating conditions of an Italian WTE plant. The analysis allows the verification of the constraints imposed by the European legislation on the temperature of the combustion products and the identification of any issues related to the plant operation. In order to demonstrate the performance of the proposed numerical modelling approach, in this paper the authors present and discuss the results obtained by applying the model to one day-averaged operating condition of a WTE plant in Italy. Input parameters are obtained from available measurements and numerical results are validated against experiments showing a good agreement. Data and results in this paper are presented in a normalized form for confidentiality.
Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering, Mar 1, 2014
One of the main issues in the management and control of Natural Gas (NG) transmission networks is... more One of the main issues in the management and control of Natural Gas (NG) transmission networks is represented by Unaccounted-for-Gas (UAG), that is the quantity to be necessarily considered in the network balancing equation to take into account the unavoidable measuring errors. Even though this aspect has been continuously investigated in the scientific literature, few studies are available concerning UAG sources and related uncertainty estimation by considering pipelines typology, operative and environmental conditions, metrological performance of the installed measuring systems, procedures used to perform the network balancing and to estimate each term of the balancing equation including the losses and line-packs terms. In this paper the authors investigate the UAG sources and evaluate the criticalities related to UAG estimationeprediction, besides the possible actions aimed at reducing UAG quantity in different NG transmission networks. To this purpose, the authors investigate the UAG in some relevant NG transmission networks, statistically analyzing annual and monthly trends of UAG and evidence UAG sources, with particular reference to the influence of the uncertainty of the measuring plants. In fact, inaccurate measurements can be responsible of large UAG, with potentially significant economic losses for all players in the system. Finally, the authors point out that the main UAG sources are related to some systematic measurement errors associated to climatic conditions and propose a simplified model to predict UAG value.
IOP conference series, Nov 1, 2022
Energies, Oct 30, 2022
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Thermal Science, 2019
Radiators represent the most spread heating body (installed since late 1800s) and in the last dec... more Radiators represent the most spread heating body (installed since late 1800s) and in the last decades different radiators typologies have been proposed on the market, characterized by different materials, sizes, shapes, etc. Recent EU Directive on energy efficiency has set the obligation to install individual meters for space heating in building served by a central heating source. To this aim, when direct heat meters are not technically feasible, indirect systems like heat cost allocators are applied on each radiator in a dwelling and the knowledge of single radiators' thermal output is essential for an accurate and fair heat cost sharing. The EN 442:2014 describes a method for radiators' thermal output measurement whose expanded uncertainty is lower than 1% in reference laboratory conditions. However, radiators' thermal output is strongly dependent on installation and boundary conditions. Thus, to get radiators' thermal output at operating conditions "characteristic equations" are available but, unfortunately, they do not include any possible actual operating condition among which: installation position with respect to the wall and the floor, presence of grid/shelf/niche or an obstruction (e. g. caused by curtains), thermo-fluid-dynamic condition variations (inlet flow rate and temperature), and hydraulic connections. In this paper, the experimental results of thermal output measurement of different radiators typologies (cast iron, aluminum) at different installation conditions are presented, together with an analysis of the associate technical-economic effects on space heating cost sharing. Reductions of radiators' thermal output up to 15% due to hydraulic connections and between 10% and 20% due to flow-rate variations have been found. Furthermore, different installation conditions showed deviations between operating and standard radiators' thermal output between 5% and 15%.
Energy Procedia, Nov 1, 2016
Heating bodies are thermodynamic systems whose heat output is strongly dependent on boundary cond... more Heating bodies are thermodynamic systems whose heat output is strongly dependent on boundary conditions and in about a century several attempts have been made for its experimental determination. To this aim, at the beginning of 60s, in Europe different national standards were adopted (e.g. in 1967 in Italy the UNI 6514/1967). At European level, the EN 442-1:2014 and EN 442-2:2014 allows the heating body heat output estimation with an expanded uncertainty lower than 1% and they are now accepted in various international markets. The EN 442 also allows heat output calculation in operating conditions different from standard ones by employing theoretical-experimental correlations that, by their nature, are not able to include any possible actual operating condition. In fact, in actual operating conditions the heating body heat output depends on several factors, among which: i) installation position with respect to the wall and the floor; ii) presence grid/shelf/niche or an obstruction caused by curtains on the heating body; iii) thermo-fluid-dynamic condition variations (inlet flow rate and temperature); iv) hydraulic connections. Radiators represent the most spread heating body (installed since the end of '800) and in the last decades different radiators typologies have been proposed on the market, characterized by different materials, sizes, shapes, etc. In the present paper the authors present the preliminary result of an experimental campaign on field for the heat output measurement of different radiators typologies (cast iron, aluminum) as a function of different installation and operating conditions. The influence on the heating body performance and the associate technical-economical consequences in terms of heat cost allocation accuracy have been investigated.
ABSTRACT La stima delle quantità di energia termica consumate nelle singole unità abitative è cer... more ABSTRACT La stima delle quantità di energia termica consumate nelle singole unità abitative è certamente un tema attuale e dibattuto visti i numerosi risvolti tecnici, legislativi e di tutela del consumatore. La Direttiva 2012/27/UE sull’efficienza energetica, recepita in Italia con il D.L. 102/14, impone agli Stati membri l’obbligo di installare (se tecnicamente possibile ed efficiente in termini di costi) nei condomini e negli edifici riforniti da una fonte centralizzata di riscaldamento/raffreddamento contatori individuali per misurare il consumo di calore o raffreddamento o di acqua calda sanitaria per ciascuna unità abitativa. Inoltre, nei casi in cui l’uso di contatori individuali non sia tecnicamente possibile o efficiente la stessa Direttiva prevede che,in alternativa, siano impiegati sistemi di contabilizzazione indiretti quali i ripartitori. In Italia, già ai sensi del Codice Civile e della Legge 10/91, non era più possibile ripartire i consumi energetici secondo criteri millesimali, ma era obbligo tener conto degli effettivi consumi (UNI, 2013). Il D.P.R. 551/99 (art.5) ha reso obbligatoria la contabilizzazione del calore per ogni singola unità immobiliare negli edifici di nuova costruzione e la cui concessione edilizia sia stata rilasciata dopo il 30 giugno 2000. Inoltre il D.P.R. 59/99 fortemente consiglia l’adozione della contabilizzazione del calore nel caso di mera sostituzione di generatore (art.4 comma 6), rendendola poi obbligatoria “ove tecnicamente possibile” in caso di ristrutturazione o installazione dell’impianto termico (art.4 comma 10). Le apparecchiature installate ai sensi del comma 10 del suddetto D.P.R. devono assicurare un errore di misura, nelle condizioni di utilizzo, inferiore al 5%. Errori massimi ammissibili questi ultimi che risultano attualmente compatibili e verificabili nelle condizioni di utilizzo solo con l’adozione di sistemi di contabilizzazione diretta (i cosiddetti CET), a loro volta regolamentati nell’allegato MI-004 della Direttiva 2004/22/CE MID sugli strumenti di misura e nel DM 155/2013.
Journal of physics, Apr 1, 2022
The ever-growing energy demand and environmental pollution level have pushed research interest to... more The ever-growing energy demand and environmental pollution level have pushed research interest toward the development of new promising technologies to utilize bioenergy sustainably. In this scenario, biomass gasification has been regarded as a promising renewable energy resource that, if efficiently exploited, can contribute to the reduction of dependency on fossil fuel and CO2 emissions from the power sector. Nevertheless, exploitation of biomass gasification still requires to overcome technological and logistical issues. In this work, the authors propose a general thermodynamic model able to predict the steady operating conditions of biomass gasification. Assuming thermodynamic equilibrium, the model is able to predict temperature, mass flow rate and composition of produced syngas. Moreover, a numerical model of the biomass gasification system has been developed by using the commercial software Aspen Plus. It is a steady-state zero-dimensional equilibrium model, based on the mass and energy balances, assuming the Gibbs free energy minimization. Aspen Plus allows building models of customized operative units using the Fortran code. In order to assure the performance of both analytical and Aspen Plus models, numerical results are compared with experimental data available in the scientific literature for downdraft gasifiers.
Journal of physics, Apr 1, 2021
Accurate temperature measurements are essential for accounting and balancing natural gas in trans... more Accurate temperature measurements are essential for accounting and balancing natural gas in transmission and distribution networks. In fact, in order to convert the gas volumes measured at operational conditions into standard reference ones, the accurate knowledge of both the thermodynamic conditions of the gas (i.e. temperature and pressure) and its chemical composition is necessary. In the case of large flow-meters, even small measurement errors (e.g. deriving from difference between the ambient temperature and the temperature of the fluid) can become relevant in terms of “unaccounted for gas”, especially when they do not find adequate compensation during the annual balancing of the network. To this aim it is necessary to carefully evaluate the systematic errors affecting temperature measurement which depend on instrumentation metrological characteristics as well as on thermo-fluid dynamic issues. In some cases, thermal insulation of the flow-meter and both upstream and downstream measuring stretches should be necessary. In this paper the authors present the results of an experimental study on the installation effects of temperature probes in closed conduits, performed at different operating conditions of natural gas transmission networks and aimed at estimating the typical random and systematic effects, and proposing optimal installation and operative solutions.
Building Simulation Conference proceedings
The aim of this research is to evaluate the performance of official natural gas allocation method... more The aim of this research is to evaluate the performance of official natural gas allocation methods currently applied within natural gas network of three EU Member States, with a view to simulating energy consumption of urban building stocks. The models have been used to estimate natural gas consumption of an urban building stock with Non-Daily Metered (NDM) customers at two scales: city and neighbourhood. To this end, these methods have been applied to a distribution network in Southern Italy with about 16000 NDM customers and 4000 buildings. The present research gives useful information about the accuracy of natural gas billing for NDM customers.
2018 IEEE International Conference on Environment and Electrical Engineering and 2018 IEEE Industrial and Commercial Power Systems Europe (EEEIC / I&CPS Europe), 2018
The European Union, through the Energy Performance of Building Directive (EPBD), has recently set... more The European Union, through the Energy Performance of Building Directive (EPBD), has recently set the minimum requirements in order to reduce the energy consumption of existing buildings and achieving nearly zero energy buildings (NZEBs). In order to comply with these requirements different aspects of the building sector have to be dealt with. In the present paper two different aspects related to the energy and environmental performances of the existing building towards NZEB are analyzed: a) the use of the Smart Energy Systems with particular regard to the heat sharing systems, and b) the effect of the window retrofit on indoor air quality.
Energies, 2021
Blending hydrogen into the natural gas infrastructure is becoming a very promising practice to in... more Blending hydrogen into the natural gas infrastructure is becoming a very promising practice to increase the exploitation of renewable energy sources which can be used to produce “green” hydrogen. Several research projects and field experiments are currently aimed at evaluating the risks associated with utilization of the gas blend in end-use devices such as the gas meters. In this paper, the authors present the results of experiments aimed at assessing the effect of hydrogen injection in terms of the durability of domestic gas meters. To this end, 105 gas meters of different measurement capabilities and manufacturers, both brand-new and withdrawn from service, were investigated in terms of accuracy drift after durability cycles of 5000 and 10,000 h with H2NG mixtures and H2 concentrations of 10% and 15%. The obtained results show that there is no metrologically significant or statistically significant influence of hydrogen content on changes in gas meter indication errors after subj...
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Papers by Marco Dell'Isola