Artículos

Ecuador's energy mix has greatly reduced its dependency on fossil fuels the last 15 years, down to a marginal role (5%) in electricity generation in 2017. The development plan for the Ecuadorian power network aims to keep adding hydropower to meet the increasing demand. A prospective lifecycle assessment (LCA) of the future power network (2012–2050) can determine the feasibility of the development plan and its environmental sustainability in the long run.

The Villonaco Wind Farm is located between coordinates 693030 E 9558392 N and 693526 E 9556476 N in the province of Loja in southern Ecuador. It is the first wind farm in continental Ecuador, with a capacity of 16.5 MW and a location of roughly 2720 m above sea level in rugged terrain, which is especially relevant compared to others wind farms in the global context. This paper presents a statistical analysis of the Annual Energy Production of the Villonaco Wind Farm in the period from 2014 to 2018.

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems provide the people working/living inside buildings with ‘conditioned air’ so that they will have a comfortable and safe environment. Thermal comfort is considered as an aspect of a sustainable building in almost all sustainable building evaluation methods and tools. In fact, in the building sector, HVAC systems represent between 40 and 60% of energy consumption. In this paper, two thermal comfort methods have been experimentally analysed (Predicted Mean Vote or the so-called Fanger’s method, and the Adaptive Comfort Method).

In this paper, we use the correlation between the average wind speed and the elevation above sea level to present a regression model for calculating the average wind speed and evaluating the wind potential in the southern region of Ecuador. After obtaining the regression model, an adjustment factor based on the topographic slope has been included, mainly since the wind speed could vary largely as it blows across the lower slope regions or intermediate hills of mountains.

This article reports a mathematical model with experimental measurements of a novel solar dryer named: Parvati Solar Dryer (PSD), which consists of a double angle linear collector and a cylindrical drying chamber with a translucent surface. Semi-theoretical and empirical thin-film models were evaluated to select the one with the best fit (higher coefficient of determination R2 and lower mean square error RMSE) in terms of the humidity ratio MR and taking into account that the drying chamber temperature does not exceed 35 ℃ to maintain the quality of the coffee.