10 research outputs found

    Old wine in new skins? China’s neighbourhood transformation from danwei to shequ

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    In this paper we argue that the urban neighborhood is a social product that serves as an instrument to ensure the social stability. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the socialist work unit (danwei), which assumed a basic role in socialist policy and the embodiment of the institution, has been the elementary social cell in the planned economy. With the decline of danwei and the introduction of shequ in the market-oriented economy, neighbourhood transformation exercises a deep influence on social integration and personal unfolding and poses a big challenge for social coherence. After exploring the neighbourhood concepts in the Chinese context, the paper tracks the trajectory of neighbourhood transformation from danwei to shequ and analyses the practice of neighbourhood management. It concludes that the new practice of neighbourhood management remains a sort of ‘old wine in new skins’ in regard of its top-down approach

    Cascade energy optimization for waste heat recovery in distributed energy systems

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    The efficiency of distributed energy systems can be significantly increased through waste heat recovery from industry or power generation. The technologies used for this process are typically dependent on the quality and temperature grades of waste heat. To maximize the efficiency of cascade heat utilization, it is important to optimize the choice of waste heat recovery technologies and their operation. In this paper, a detailed mixed integer linear programming optimization model is proposed for waste heat recovery in a district-scale microgrid. The model can distinguish waste heat quality for planning and operation optimization of distributed energy systems. Heat utilization technologies are formulated in this developed model and categorized in different temperature grades. The developed model is validated using four typical cases under different settings of system operation and business models. It is found that the optimization model, by distinguishing waste heat temperature, can increase energy cost savings by around 5%, compared to models that do not consider waste heat temperature grades. Additionally, the results indicate that the developed model can provide more realistic configuration and technologies dispatch
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