Power Engineering Advances and Challenges, Part A: Thermal, Hydro and Nuclear Power

Faced with the climate change phenomena, humanity has had to now contend with numerous changes, including our attitude environment protection, and also with depletion of classical energy resources. These have had consequences in the power production sector, which was already struggling with negative public opinion on nuclear energy, but a favorable perception of renewable energy resources. The objective of this edited volume is to review all these changes and to present solutions for future power generation.

Table of Contents PROGRESS IN THERMAL, HYDRO AND NUCLEAR CLASSICAL TECHNOLOGIES Understanding of the Flexibility from Combined Cycle Gas Turbine Plant Fei Teng, Goran Strbac Directions for improving the flexibility of coal-fired units in an era of increasing potential of renewable energy sources Lukasz Bartela, Jaroslaw Milewski Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Power Cycles Timothy J. Held Nuclear power Maurizio Luigi Cumo, Renato Gatto Next generation of nuclear reactors Maurizio Luigi Cumo, Renato Gatto Hydropower Kosmas A. Kavadias, D. Apostolou ADVANCES IN RENEWABLE ENERGY-BASED THERMAL TECHNOLOGIES Geothermal Power Franco Donatini Power to gas conversion technologies and related systems Susana Pérez Gil and Mikel Belsué Echevarria Stationary Fuel Cells and Hybrid Systems Angelo Moreno, Viviana Cigolotti, Mariagiovanna Minutillo and Alessandra Perna Biopower technologies David Chiaramonti, Matteo Prussi and Andrea M Rizzo Energy plantations value-added options Gheorghe Lazaroiu, Lucian Mihaescu, Gabriel Negreanu, Ionel Pisa New efficient and ecologic energy vectors (solid biomass-hydrogen) Gheorghe Lazaroiu, Lucian Mihaescu, Ionel Pisa STORAGE OF THERMAL ENERGY Thermal energy storage technologies Kostantin G. Aravossis and Vassilis Kapsalis Impact of energy storage systems value-added options David Bullejos Martín and Jorge M. Llamas Aragonés

Viorel Badescu is affiliated with Candida Oancea Institute at Polytechnic University of Bucharest. Main fields of research are physics of radiation, solar radiation availability, photovoltaic and photothermal conversion of solar energy, optimal control of thermal engineering processes, passive buildings, macroengineering, statistical physics and thermodynamics, with results reported in more than 250 papers and 30 books. He is corresponding member of the Romanian Academy. George Lazaroiu, PhD, is Associate Professor at Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, NY Spiru Haret University, Bucharest. Linda Barelli is Associate Professor at Department of Engineering, University if Perugia.