Canadian researchers use Energy3D to design renewable energy systems for mobile hospitals in Libya

Fig. 1: A H-shaped mobile hospital designed using Energy3D

Prof. Tariq Iqbal and his student Emadeddin Hussein from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada published a paper in the Journal of Clean Energy Technologies titled with "Design of Renewable Energy System for a Mobile Hospital in Libya."

The researchers recognized that the United Nations' efforts to provide field hospitals have recently decreased in areas that face a high risk in transportation, lack of power, and lack of security for field officers, such as war-torn countries like Libya and Syria. In those unfortunate parts of the world, lack of aids and health resources have a major effect on people's lives. Their paper proposes a photovoltaics (PV) hybrid system for supplying an electric load of a mobile hospital in an area where there is no grid. Such a hybrid system is believed to be a cost-effective solution to power a mobile hospital capable of providing uninterrupted power to support a doctor and two nurses.

Our Energy3D software was used in their research as a simulation tool to study the heat load and optimize the design solution. Figure 1 shows a H-shaped design from their paper (I guess the H-shape was chosen because it is the initial of the word "hospital").

Fig. 2: Energy3D supports 450 regions from 117 countries.

We highly appreciate the researchers' efforts in finding ways to help people living in remote areas and war zones in the world. We are glad to learn that our software may have helped a bit in providing humanitarian aids to those people. Inspired by their work, we will add more weather data to Energy3D to cover areas in the state of unrest (455 regions from 120 countries are currently supported in Energy3D, as shown in Figure 2). In the future, we will also develop curriculum materials and design challenges to engage students all over the world to join these humanitarian efforts through our global drive and outreach.