Observe # Analyse # Conclude

Question 1:

India has a large network of railways throughout the country. The rail network traverses the length and breadth of the country, covering a total length of 64,015 kilometers (39,777 mi). It is the 4th largest railway network in the world, transporting over 10 billion passengers and over 1050 million tones of
freight annually. Safety on trains is indeed a matter of concern. We can see passengers without reserved tickets sitting near the exits, sometimes sleeping on the aisle. Ticket examiners and RPF personnel turn a blind eye to this. Due
to such overcrowding, the safety of passengers and their luggage is compromised. 

Almost all railway coaches now have switch points to charge mobile phones but in most of them, the cables are seen dangling loose with many joints. This may cause short circuits and sparks. Despite being among the largest employers in the world, the Indian Railways is several decades behind global standards when it comes to safety. Relatives of victims and survivors of the Nellore train accident claim there weren’t adequate fire-fighting measures, and that the emergency exit was jammed. 

Suggest some of the measures to increase safety in trains and how to reduce the amount of damage caused to life and train in case of an accident.

Question 2:

Sometimes complex truths become clearer when we put them in very simple terms. Around the world, political leaders are still living in the delusion that we have time on our hands to find sensible alternatives to oil. But global oil production has peaked. As each day passes by, we are moving towards a potential fuel crisis. Alternatively, we can conserve energy through various methods for energy management and effective designing of homes can be one such method.

Recently there was a power grid failure in which Northern, Eastern and North-eastern grids had failed due to overdrawing of power by some states. An overstrained power generation and transmission structure spreading across 21 States of the North, East and North-East regions collapsed, plunging half of the country into darkness, trapping hundreds of miners in Jharkhand and West Bengal and paralyzing the movement of inter-State trains. 

Most of the electricity is consumed due to cooling load of a building during summer season by the use of conventional cooling systems i.e. air conditioners. We can avoid this problem by reducing the electricity consumption due to cooling load of a building and to increase the efficiency of energy conversion. Green building reduces building impact on the human health and the environment during building’s lifecycle by
1. Efficiently using energy, water and other resources.
2. Reducing waste, pollution and environmental degradation.

Suggest some of the innovative ways in which we can reduce the cooling load of a building and how to make a building independent of power grid.

Question 3:

The transportation sector accounts for a large and growing share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Worldwide, motor vehicles emit well over 900 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) each year, accounting for more than 15 percent of global fossil fuel-derived CO2 emissions.1 In the industrialized world alone, 20-25 percent of GHG emissions come from the
transportation sector. The share of transport-related emissions is growing rapidly due to the continued increase in transportation activity.2 In 1950, there were only 70 million cars, trucks,and buses on the world’s roads. By 1994, there were about nine times that number, or 630 million vehicles. Since the early 1970s, the global fleet has been growing at a rate of 16 million vehicles per year. This expansion has been accompanied by a similar growth in fuel
consumption.3 If this kind of linear growth continues, by the year 2025 there will be well over one billion vehicles on the world’s roads.

The dictionary defines hybrid as something of mixed origin. A hybrid vehicle is one that combines a smaller than normal internal combustion gasoline engine with an electric motor. An engine that combines two or more sources of power is called a hybrid engine. Typical features in a hybrid include the following:
• Produces much less power than an average
• Produces much less pollution than standard gasoline cars
• Usually constructed of ultra light weight materials like carbon fiber or aluminum to overcome the power gap.
• Generally designed to be more aerodynamic than most cars, allowing them to “slice” through the air instead of pushing it out of the way
• A process called regenerative braking is employed to store the kinetic energy generated by brake use in the batteries, which in turn will power the electric motor. 

Power usage:
• Electric power is used at starts and stops, low speeds (generally below 25 km/hr)
• Gasoline engine comes to play at cruising or highway speeds

There are two types of gasoline-electric hybrids:
• Parallel hybrid:Gasoline engine and electric motor work together to move the car forward
• Series hybrid: Gasoline engine either directly powers an electric motor that powers the vehicle, or changes batteries.
Hybrids achieve improved efficiencies using several approaches:
• Employ regenerative braking to recover energy and downsize or right size the engine or primary power source.
• Control the engine or primary power source to operate more efficiently and/or work more often in a more efficient range.

Improve the efficiency and cost of existing hybrids or electric vehicles by incorporating techniques that would reduce GHG emission (Considering that electricity is produced by thermal power plant that uses coal as raw material which is also generates GHG)
The main factors that are needs to be consider are:-

• Range: how far can the vehicle travel between refueling?
• Refueling time: how long does it take to refuel?
• Efficiency or fuel economy: how far can the vehicle travel for a given unit of fuel energy?
• Performance: how well does the vehicle handle?
• Power: what acceleration can the engine deliver? What speeds can it maintain?
• Safety: how vulnerable is the vehicle to collision? How quickly can it brake? and
• Cost.

Can come up with Hybrid Electric Vehicle OR Electric Vehicle OR Both of them.

Source : Avishkar, Tech Fest of MNNIT, Allahabad