The application, screening, evaluation and funding of National Natural Science Foundation of China programs in Engineering Thermophysics and Energy Utilization Discipline in 2024 are summarized and statistically analyzed. The strategic research, funding proposals in the field of energy and power under the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals are introduced. The outstanding achievements funded by the discipline in 2024 and future work in 2025 are introduced as well.

Aiming at the problems of low power generation efficiency and water high consumption in the chemical recuperated gas turbine cycle, a chemical reinjection gas turbine cycle is proposed in this study. It is proposed that part of the flue gas in the gas turbine was put back into the reactor, the reaction of methane self-reforming reaction, and realize the efficient transformation of methane conversion rate. The technology features fully realize the effect of improving the quality of gas turbine flue gas waste heat, and improving the circulation work. Through the improvement of the fuel energy conversion process and the optimization of the heat transfer process of the system, the power generation efficiency of the new system is increased by 9.12% compared with that of the chemical heat recovery system at the design point, the performance of the power generation of lower pressure ratio and high gas turbine inlet temperature is better. The economic analysis shows that the economic payback period of the system is 2.3 years, which has good economic benefits. 

District heating system is one of the important carriers for coordinating renewable energy and traditional energy and realizing flexible consumption of renewable energy. Considering the impact of the uncertainty of renewable energy output and user cluster heat load on the dynamic transportation process of district heating network, it is necessary to quantitatively analyze the uncertain variables on both sides of the source and load and the dynamic characteristics of the heating network. This paper first established a dynamic transportation model of the heating network to solve its heat loss and transmission delay characteristics. Secondly, the Gram-Chalier A algorithm was applied to calculate the probability distribution semi-analytical expression of the thermal power of the source and load nodes of the system, and Bayesian credible inference method was used to calculate the fluctuation interval of node thermal power. This paper selected a secondary heating network in Beijing for model accuracy validation and case analysis. The system has 90 nodes and 109 pipes. The results show that the proposed model and algorithm can effectively quantify the fluctuation interval of nodes’ thermal power.

Entransy analytical model of heat transfer process in stacked porous medium is built, and a new utilization efficiency of Entransy is proposed, meanwhile wave function and field function characteristics of Entransy are found. Based on the model, coupling the cooling curve, surface temperature of cooling products in porous medium, internal temperature gradient, convective heat transfer coefficient along quick freezer, entransy dissipation rate during cooling process are predicted for the first time. Mesoscale characteristics of coupled heat transfer for conduction, convection and radiation in heat transfer process in porous medium have been found. Results show that, volume scale of internal heat transfer core and temperature gradient control heat flux and convective heat transfer coefficient on surface, and wavy characteristics of internal temperature difference decreasing rate affect tendency of heat flux convective heat transfer coefficient. Temperature change trend can be predicted accurately based on along heat transfer coefficient. Porous medium can enhance heat transfer, and scaling factor of heat transfer coefficient without and within porous medium is about 0.6, meanwhile radiation and convection have field synergy characteristics.

In this paper, a new solar photovoltaic/thermal system with parabolic trough concentrator and indium tin oxide/ethylene glycol nano-fluid beam splitting is proposed. Indium tin oxide/ethylene glycol nano-fluid is prepared and tested. The results show that the absorptivity and transmittance of the indium tin oxide nano-fluid are 30.9% and 69.1% in the full wavelength range. The optical behavior of the photovoltaic/thermal system is studied and the overall optical efficiency of the system is 89.38%. When the sun tracking error is less than 0.2 ̊, the photovoltaic/thermal system can have an overall optical efficiency which is greater than 84.14%. The operation performance analysis reveal that the photoelectric efficiency of the photovoltaic subsystem is 29.1%, and the overall photoelectric conversion and thermal efficiencies of the photovoltaic/thermal system are 19.1% and 19%. The thermal efficiency of the system can be improved by increasing the inlet indium tin oxide nano-fluid velocity, or by reducing the inlet indium tin oxide nano-fluid temperature and external convectional heat transfer coefficient.