Category Archives: Energy Science & Engineering

Energy Science & Engineering News

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ESE coverWe are delighted to announce that Energy Science & Engineering has now published its second issue. The journal is published in partnership with the SCI (Society of Chemical Industry)

With an increasing awareness of the need for a more sustainable ways to live, food waste valorization has attracted a great deal of attention as an alternative to the disposal of a wide range of residues in landfill sites. In addition there has been an ongoing debate about ‘food-versus-fuel’ in the development of biofuels, which has initiated a search for innovative technologies that can sustainably convert non-food bioresources to liquid transportation fuels or chemicals. Recent research has focused on food waste and its potential as an energy source. Two such articles have been published in the first Energy Science & Engineering issues and are free to read, download and share.

Advances on waste valorization: new horizons for a more sustainable society by Rick Arneil D. Arancon, Carol Sze Ki Lin, King Ming Chan, Tsz Him Kwan and Rafael Luque
Summary: Advanced waste valorization practices provide an infinite number of possibilities to convert residues into chemicals, fuels, and materials. This article has already been cited in Sustainable Chemical Processes.

Biodiesel from grease interceptor to gas tank by Alyse Mary E. Ragauskas, Yunqiao Pu and Art J. Ragauskas
Summary: Most developed and developing nations require the collection and proper disposal of trap sewer fats, oils and greases (FOG). This bioresource is a valuable feedstock for biodiesel and this review highlights the chemical constituents of this source of FOG and how it can be processed into biodiesel now and in the future.

The author of the second article, Arthur J. Ragauskas at the Georgia Institute of Technology has recently been honoured by a National American Chemical Society award – TheACS Award for Affordable Green Chemistry  sponsored by Dow Chemical and endowed by Rohm and Haas. Art is also a member of the ESE editorial board and we are delighted that his contribution to science has been recognised by this prestigious award.

Authors are invited to submit their articles to Energy Science & Engineering via the online submission site. Papers are welcomed on fundamental and applied research on energy supply and use.

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Energy Science & Engineering first issue now live!

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ESE coverWe are delighted to announce that Energy Science & Engineering has published its inaugural issue.

Since opening for submission in October 2012, Energy Science & Engineering has received high quality of papers across the field of energy research. Published in collaboration with SCI (Society of Chemical Industry), ESE is a peer reviewed, open access journal dedicated to fundamental and applied research on energy supply and use. Priority is given to quality research papers that are accessible to a broad readership and discuss sustainable, state-of-the art approaches to shaping the future of energy.

Read all our open access articles online here

purple_lock_open  Biodiesel from Grease Interceptor to Gas-Tank
Alyse Mary E. Ragauskas, Yunqiao Pu, Art J. Ragauskas
Summary: The need for sustainable biofuels has initiated a global search for innovative technologies that can sustainably convert nonfood bioresources to liquid transportation fuels. While 2nd generation cellulosic ethanol has begun to address this challenge, other resources including yellow and brown grease are rapidly evolving commercial opportunities that are addressing regional biodiesel needs. This review examines the technical and environmental factors driving the collection of trap FOG (Fats, Oils, and Greases), its chemical composition and technologies currently available and future developments that facilitate the conversion of FOG into biodiesel.

purple_lock_open  Next generation biorefineries will solve the food, biofuels, and environmental trilemma in the energy–food–water nexus
Y.-H Percival Zhang
Summary: The future roles of biomass and carbohydrate for meeting needs of food/feed, renewable materials, and transportation fuels (biofuels) remain controversial due to numerous issues, such as increasing food and feed needs, constraints of natural resources (land, water, phosphate, biomass, etc.), and limitations of natural photosynthesis, as well as competing energy conversion pathways and technologies. The goal of this opinion article is to clarify the future roles of biomass and biorefineries using quantitative data other than adjective words

purple_lock_open  Lock-in thermography as a tool for quality control of photovoltaic modules
Andreas Vetter, Frank Fecher, Jens Adams, Raymund Schaeffler, Jean-Patrick Theisen, Christoph J. Brabec and Claudia Buerhop
Summary: In this short communication, we present a method which utilizes contactless ILIT (illuminated lock-in thermography) measurement of a photovoltaic (PV) module and image postprocessing in order to calculate the peak power Pmpp of the module and to study the influence of local defects on the module performance. In total, 103 Copper-Indium-Gallium-Diselenide (CIGS) modules were investigated and the results showed a good correlation (mean error less than 6%) between the calculated IR-signal and the measured Pmpp. We performed our study on CIGS modules but the presented approach is not restricted to CIGS modules. The method provides a valuable tool for PV quality control.

Enjoy reading the first issue! Submit your paper here> Sign-up for eToc alerts here>

Wiley signs Open Access Agreements with Helmholtz Association and University of Manitoba

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Ten institutes of the Helmholtz Association and the University of Manitoba have signed up for Wiley Open Access Accounts.   These agreements provide active financial support and a streamlined process for authors to ensure open access to their published research in Wiley-Blackwell journals.  Authors affiliated with the Univesity of Manitoba and the institutes of the Helmholtz Association listed below can now benefit from these arrangements when publishing articles in Wiley Open Access journals.

Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung
Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY
Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum
Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt
Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE)
Forschungszentrum Jülich
GEOMAR Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel
Helmholtz-Zentrum für Infektionsforschung
Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung – UFZ
Karlsruher Institut für Technologie

The University of Manitoba and the Helmholtz Association insitutions join a number of funders who have opened a Wiley Open Access Account since this was launched. Browse our listing to see the institutions / funders who have an account or partnership with Wiley Open Access.

More information about our open access options for funders and institutions can be found here.

The Evolution of Author Guidelines

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Congratulations are due to PeerJ for succeeding in bringing into focus an essential publisher service that has been little publicised in the past.

The journal opened for submissions on December 3rd, and many tweets and blogs have been spawned by the following passage in the Instructions for Authors:

We want authors spending their time doing science, not formatting.

We include reference formatting as a guide to make it easier for editors, reviewers, and PrePrint readers, but will not strictly enforce the specific formatting rules as long as the full citation is clear.

Styles will be normalized by us if your manuscript is accepted.

Of course, it would be ridiculous to assert that every manuscript ever submitted up to this point had perfectly formatted references in journal style; in fact it is relatively rare to make no edits at all on a reference list. Journal Production Editors have been converting reference formats since journal publishing began; laboriously at first, but the digital revolution has certainly helped in recent years, with more automated processes and specialist typesetters taking on much of the tedium.

 As the PeerJ guidelines correctly state, a requirement for a particular style can help the editorial and review process, and I would go further in saying that it can impose some rigour on the creation of the reference list, helping to ensure that all critical elements are present. However, it has been the case for some time that publishers have barely batted an eye if an article happens to arrive in the incorrect format, as long as all of the important content was present.

 At Wiley, we took this a stage further on the launch of our Wiley Open Access program back in May 2011. We made a point of paring the formatting requirements down to a bare minimum for the entire article. The Author Guidelines state:

 We place very few restrictions on the way in which you prepare your article, and it is not necessary to try to replicate the layout of the journal in your submission. We ask only that you consider your reviewers by supplying your manuscript in a clear, generic and readable layout, and ensure that all relevant sections are included. Our production process will take care of all aspects of formatting and style.

And with respect to the references:

 As with the main body of text, the completeness and content of your reference list is more important than the format chosen. A clear and consistent, generic style will assist the accuracy of our production processes and produce the highest quality published work, but it is not necessary to try to replicate the journal’s own style, which is applied during the production process. If you use bibliographic software to generate your reference list, select a standard output style, and check that it produces full and comprehensive reference listings…The final journal output will use the ‘Harvard’ style of reference citation. If your manuscript has already been prepared using the ‘Vancouver’ system, we are quite happy to receive it in this form. We will perform the conversion from one system to the other during the production process.

There is no doubt that this service, which has been quietly in operation in most journals for some time, has now been thrown much more into the limelight, and this can only be positive because it showcases one of the valuable services that professional publishing can provide.

Reading through the blogs, I see that the more overt adoption of this service as a point of policy is already spreading to more journals, as it has to eLife, and Elsevier’s Free Radical Biology & Medicine.

 This can only be a good thing.

Will Wilcox, Journals Content Management Director for Life Sciences

Wiley Announces New Open Access Journal: Energy Science & Engineering

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ESE coverWe are pleased to announce the launch of Energy Science & Engineering as part of the Wiley Open Access publishing program. The journal provides authors with a new platform for the rapid dissemination of the latest energy research and will be published in collaboration with the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI).

Energy Science & Engineering aims to facilitate collaboration and spark innovation in energy research and development. Due to the importance of this topic to society and economic development, the journal will give priority to quality research papers that are accessible to a broad readership and discuss sustainable, state-of-the art approaches to shaping the future of energy.

Energy Science & Engineering is the latest addition to Wiley’s portfolio of energy journals and will benefit from relationships with titles including Progress in Photovoltaics: Research & Applications (IF 5.7), Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining (IF 4.7) and International Journal of Energy Research (IF 2.1).

“We are particularly proud to partner with SCI in this venture. The new journal will cover all energy research, from wind energy, photovoltaics and biofuels, to nuclear energy, power engineering and clean technology for fossil fuels,” said Jon Walmsley, VP & Managing Director, Physical Sciences & Engineering, Wiley. “Wiley aims to support researchers by connecting them to their peers, funding bodies and the wider scientific community.”

“Energy is one of SCI’s main societal themes and Energy Science & Engineering further strengthens our portfolio of international scientific journals in this area,” said Joanne Lyall, Executive Director of SCI. “We strongly encourage interdisciplinary learning and believe that the connection between science and engineering will prove particular valuable to stimulate innovation.

“Energy Science & Engineering not only offers those who contribute to this vitally important sector a new outlet for their research but also recognizes the growing importance of open access journals in the dissemination of high quality research information.”

Professor Tomas Kåberger, from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, has been appointed Editor-in-Chief, alongside a growing list of editorial board members. Professor Kåberger earned his PhD in Physical Resource Theory and has held leading positions in the energy sector. This included Director General of the Swedish Energy Agency, an office he held for three years. He is also Executive Board Chair of the Japan Renewable Energy Foundation.

For more information visit www.energyscienceengineering.com

Submit your article via the online submission site >