Specialized Sessions

CLIMATE CHANGE VULNERABILITY OF WATER RESOURCES AND MITIGATION

Date: To be announced

Chair: Professor Zekai Sen

Hydraulics and Water Resources Division Civil Engineering Faculty
Istanbul Technical University
Maslak 34469 Istanbul Turkey
Tel: + 90 212 2853716
Fax: + 90 212 285 3710
E-mail: zsen@itu.edu.tr

Objective: All over the world, physical and biological systems are already being affected by climate changes due to anthropogenic activities, particularly regional temperature increases have impacts on water resources. Climate change is strongly affecting many aspects of systems related to snow, ice and frozen ground. Especially, hydrological systems, water resources and coastal zones are under the focus of detrimental behaviors. Groundwater in shallow aquifers is part of the hydrological cycle and is affected by climate variability and change through recharge processes as well as by human interventions in many locations. On the other hand, there is apparent increase in the frequency of destructive floods. Additionally, changes in river discharge, as well as in droughts and heavy rains in some regions, indicate that hydrological conditions have become more intense. Some local trends in reduced groundwater have been reported, but these may be due to human activities rather than climate change. There are also indications of intensified droughts in drier regions. Besides, freshwater lakes and rivers are experiencing increased water temperatures and changes in water chemistry. Scientists in particular and societies in general have to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of weather and climate change through a range of practices including water resources management, irrigation, crop diversification, disaster risk management, and insurance, because climate change poses novel risks often outside the range of experience, such as impacts related to floods, drought, water stresses, salt water intrusion into coastal aquifers and accelerated glacier retreat. It is necessary to concentrate the scientific researches along the aforementioned problems so that sustainable future developments can be maintained with balance and prosperity of the societies. In this regard, this specialized session is organized to discuss and address the above listed issues.

DOES COGENERATION HELP COMBAT GLOBAL WARMING?
Date: To be announced
Chair: Dr. Birol I. Kilkis ASHRAE Fellow and Distinguished Lecturer Professor in Engineering E-mail: birolkilkis@hotmail.com
Objective: Many countries have already grasped the benefits of combined heat and power systems with different technologies and combinations. In spite of the presence of different systems and technologies, the common denominator to all of them is the fact that they burn fossil or non-fossil fuels more efficiently and consequently reduce harmfull emissions. European Union Directive about cogeneratrion describes this reduction to be at least ten percent for the same amount of fuel consumed. In the case of a carefully optimized polygeneration system, the fuel savings may be as high as 60%, when the exergy benefits are also factored in. This event will attract many specialists, academicians and industrialist to discuss and present their cases about the potential impact of cogeneration against global warming and their impact for the carbon wedge projections until 2050.

RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES AND CARBON MITIGATION- THEIR IMPACT ON GLOBAL WARMING
Date: To be announced
Chair: Dr. Christopher Koroneos Laboratory of Heat Transfer and Environmental Engineering Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Box 483, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece Email: koroneos@aix.meng.auth.gr
Objective: The global energy use has increased dramatically in the world. The increase is bigger than the increase of the world population. The world energy supply being met by fossil fuels that are finite and emit billions of tons of CO2, the main ingredient of the global warming effect is close to 80%. What is to be done? How do we go about in reducing the emissions of carbon dioxide and minimize the global warming? The increase of the share of renewable energy sources may be one way. Carbon mitigation in parallel with RES would lead to even better results. It is the outcome of many studies that renewable energy is the only certain future energy that will lead to a less polluted environment and would reverse the global warming effect. The inexhaustible energy from the sun is the driving force for life in the universe. This energy in the form of solar energy, wind energy, biomass and hydropower could be the driving force of our global economy. Solar collectors or photovoltaics and wind turbines, could play a vital role in a new alternative energy system with low carbon emissions. In this regard this specialized session is organized to tackle these issues.

PROJECT BASED MECHANISMS AND POST-KYOTO
Date: To be announced
Chair: Dr. Haruo Imai Kyoto Institute of Economic Research, Kyoto University Tel: +81-75-753-7113 Fax: +81-75-753-7118 E-mail: imai@kier.kyoto-u.ac.jp Address: Sakyo, Kyoto Japan, 606-8501
Objective: Project-based mechanisms are first introduced in Kyoto Protocol, and CDM (clean development mechanism) has already started showing enormous success at least in terms of the credits projected to be produced. In fact some worries the flood of credits may undermine the already meager target of Kyoto Protocol. More importantly, CDM provides an important bridge between LDC and developed nation by allowing to pursue emission reduction opportunities in LDC. Now, the negotiation over post-Kyoto regime is underway, and its development certainly affects the incentives surrounding CDM. Especially incentives of LDC to participate in some manner to the international cooperation to cope with global warming is one key issue in this negotiation, and existing project based mechanism would impose several restrictions to LDC’s mode of participation. This sort of consideration in turn should be reflected in the manner the CDM executive board and COP-MOP to Kyoto Protocol should take into account when they make decisions on the operations of CDM currently.

SUSTAINABLE THERMAL MANAGEMENT FOR BETTER ENVIRONMENT

Date: To be announced

Chair: Dr. Mehmet Arik

GE Global Research Center
Niskayuna, Ny 12309
Phone: (518) 387-5960
Fax: (518) 387-7989
E-mail: arik@research.ge.com

Co-chairs:

Dr. Ali Kosar
Sabanci University
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
Tuzla, Istanbul, Turkey

Dr. Kadri Suleyman Yigit
Kocaeli University
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
Kocaeli, Turkey

Objective: Thermal management plays a key role for many engineering applications. Every application has its own characteristic thermal challenges, which engineers and researchers are dealing with. An obvious and more common thermal challenge emerges from electronics components. Electronics are used in industrial as well as residential purposes. A typical laptop releases about 30-50 W of waste heat, while a large scale server releases MWs levels of waste heat. The total energy including waste energy is supplied by the HVAC companies, and the final bill is paid by the utilizers.

A considerable amount of this energy has also been consumed by the thermal management solutions. In thermal management branch, the minimization of waste energy is sought like in the others. For this, thermal management products need to be optimized based on not only meeting thermal performance metrics but also on the energy efficiency.

This session focuses on the sustainable thermal management by creating minimal environmental impacts including, green thermal solutions, efficient alternatives, use of waste heat via small-scale waste-energy recovery systems. The scale of the systems considered in this session will range from microsystems to conventional size systems. This will bring the scaling effects on the amount of waste energy, efficiency of thermal management systems, and the resulting environmental issues with itself. As a result, this session aims to bring studies performed by researchers from different fields of thermal management under the umbrella of the maximization of both thermal hydraulic performance and energy efficiency. This would facilitate the sharing of ideas in the thermal management community about environmental issues among its members having different design area of interest and background and designing products of various scales.

GLOBAL WARMING IN THE CONTEXT OF TEACHING OF THERMODYNAMICS
Date: To be announced
Chair: Ozer ARNAS, Ph.D., P.E. (I) Life Fellow - ASME Professor of Mechanical Engineering United States Military Academy at West Point West Point, NY 10996 Phone: 845-938-5518 Fax :845-938-5522 E-mail: ozer.arnas@usma.edu
Objective: Thermodynamics is a fundamental subject that is in every mechanical engineering curriculum if not in all engineering. It is considered to be a required course for all engineering students in the United States since it is an integral part of the Fundamentals of Engineering Examination – FEE. As such it should be taught precisely and its ramifications to daily life should be emphasized to create a society of learned people who do understand the issues that relate to energy and its intelligent use. To better appreciate the outcomes of energy use, thermodynamics must be taught with an emphasis on the second law, and particularly in the context of the concept of exergy. Only then will global warming that occurs as a result of power generation can be better understood and appreciated. The second law emphasizes that energy use is taxed by nature and there is nothing we can do about it. However, as engineers we do have options in the use of sources of energy, whether it is fossil, nuclear or renewable. The footprint each leaves behind is different and it is that we should be concerned with and attempt through concerned engineering reduce it. In this session, we will attempt to further discuss these issues to increase awareness of the participants in this important topic through precise Teaching of Thermodynamics.

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