Zuansi Cai
Zuansi Cai

Dr Zuansi Cai

Associate Professor

 0131 455 2365

  Z.Cai@napier.ac.uk

  

Biography

Zuansi Cai is an Environmental Modeller and a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College in energy storage. He is a recipient of The Royal Academy of Engineering Industrial Fellowship 2021/22. Prior to Edinburgh Napier University, Zuansi conducted research as a Research Associate/Fellow for three multi-million pound RCUK and EU research projects at University of Sheffield and Queens’ University Belfast. His research interests include Energy Storage, Renewable Energy and Intelligent Energy Systems, and Water Resources & Climate Change. His earlier research experience included solid waste technology, soil and groundwater remediation, flow and transport modelling as well as uncertainty quantification, Groundwater Risk Assessment of Fracking for Shale gas.
Zuansi's research is funded by The Royal Academy of Engineering, ETP, Horizon 2020, industries, etc. He has recently developed a new numerical simulator for large-scale hydrogen and gas-mixture storage in subsurface. The simulator (GPSFLOW) is capable of simulating non-isothermal, multi-phase and multi-component flow in subsurface storage reservoir for Hydrogen and compressed air energy storage as well as geothermal storage.

School

Research Groups

Themes

Research Areas

Esteem

Advisory panels and expert committees or witness

  • Expert witness: China Plan "111" (2017-2021): 8m CNY International Cooperation

 

Conference Organising Activity

  • Conference Chair: Geo-Energy Workshop, Edinburgh Napier University, May 2019
  • Member of Scientific Committee: the International Conference on Sustainable Energy and Green Technology , Malaysia, 2018

 

External Examining/Validations

  • External Examining: MSc Thesis, Durham University, 2009

 

Fellowships and Awards

  • Fellow of The Higher Education Academy
  • Fellow of The Geological Society

 

Grant Funding Panel Member

  • The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Panel Member: UPGro, 2013

 

Grant Reviewer

  • Member of EPSRC Peer Review College
  • EPSRC Associate College Membership
  • Reviewer for Leverhulme Trust Grant Application 2017

 

Invited Speaker

  • Seminar speaker: Geo-energy at Edinburgh University, Kings Buildings- Edinburgh, Feb 2022
  • Seminar Speaker: Wuhan University, Wuhan: China, 2018
  • Conference talk: The Geological Society of London meeting—Rain, Rivers and Reservoirs, Edinburgh, Sept. 2016
  • Seminar speaker: The International Associate Hydrogeologists (Irish Group), Dublin, 2014

 

Membership of Professional Body

  • Member of American Geophysical Union

 

Public/Community Engagement

  • "Can we store renewable energy for an entire city" has been recently published in The Red Triangle 2019-2020. The article showcases my on-going research in energy storage to ENU alumni and public.

 

Visiting Positions

  • Visiting Research Fellow at Queen's University Belfast

 

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34 results

The Influence of ENSO on the Long‐Term Water Storage Anomalies in the Middle‐Lower Reaches of the Yangtze River Basin: Evaluation and Analysis

Journal Article
Li, X., Jin, T., Liu, B., Chao, N., Li, F., & Cai, Z. (2023)
The Influence of ENSO on the Long‐Term Water Storage Anomalies in the Middle‐Lower Reaches of the Yangtze River Basin: Evaluation and Analysis. Earth and Space Science, 10(10), Article e2023EA003007. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023ea003007
Recent extreme events in the Middle‐Lower reaches of the Yangtze River basin (MLYRB) are proven to be possibly linked to the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events as indi...

Numerical assessments of the effects of injected air temperature and well configuration on the cycle performance in compressed air energy storage in aquifers

Book Chapter
Yang, L., Cai, Z., Li, C., Guo, C., & He, Q. (2023)
Numerical assessments of the effects of injected air temperature and well configuration on the cycle performance in compressed air energy storage in aquifers. In J. Miocic, N. Heinemann, K. Edlmann, J. Alcalde, & R. Schultz (Eds.), Enabling Secure Subsurface Storage in Future Energy Systems. London: Geological Society. https://doi.org/10.1144/sp528-2022-74
Aquifers have advantages over salt caverns as the storage vessels for compressed air energy storage due to their wider availability for suitable sites and lower one-off capita...

Development of a Novel Simulator for Modelling Underground Hydrogen and Gas Mixture Storage

Journal Article
Cai, Z., Zhang, K., & Guo, C. (2022)
Development of a Novel Simulator for Modelling Underground Hydrogen and Gas Mixture Storage. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 47(14), 8929-8942. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2021.12.224
Underground hydrogen storage can store grid-scale energy for balancing both short-term and long-term inter-seasonal supply and demand. However, there is no numerical simulator...

Novel machine learning approach for solar photovoltaic energy output forecast using extra-terrestrial solar irradiance

Journal Article
Fjelkestam Frederiksen, C. A., & Cai, Z. (2022)
Novel machine learning approach for solar photovoltaic energy output forecast using extra-terrestrial solar irradiance. Applied Energy, 306, Article 118152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2021.118152
• Extra-terrestrial Solar Irradiance has been validated for PV output forecasting. • The machine learning approach successfully captures huge intra-daily PV output variations....

Utility-scale Subsurface Hydrogen Storage: UK Perspectives and Technology

Journal Article
Wallace, R. L., Cai, Z., Zhang, H., Zhang, K., & Guo, C. (2021)
Utility-scale Subsurface Hydrogen Storage: UK Perspectives and Technology. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 46(49), 25137-25159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2021.05.034
To reduce effects from anthropogenically induced climate change renewable energy systems are being implemented at an accelerated rate, the UKs wind capacity alone is set to mo...

Analysis of the Polypropylene-Based Aluminium-Air Battery

Journal Article
Tan, W. C., Saw, L. H., Yew, M. C., Sun, D., Cai, Z., Chong, W. T., & Kuo, P. (2021)
Analysis of the Polypropylene-Based Aluminium-Air Battery. Frontiers in Energy Research, 9, https://doi.org/10.3389/fenrg.2021.599846
Global energy demand is rising due to the rapid development and adoption of new technologies in every sector. Hence, there is a need to introduce a clean energy source that do...

The promise and challenges of utility-scale compressed air energy storage in aquifers

Journal Article
Guo, C., Li, C., Zhang, K., Cai, Z., Ma, T., Maggi, F., …Shen, L. (2021)
The promise and challenges of utility-scale compressed air energy storage in aquifers. Applied Energy, 286, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2021.116513
Widely distributed aquifers have been proposed as effective storage reservoirs for compressed air energy storage (CAES). This aims to overcome the limitations of geological co...

Modelling a field-scale compressed air energy storage in porous rock reservoirs

Conference Proceeding
Yang, L., Guo, C., Li, C., He, Q., Zhang, K., & Cai, Z. (2020)
Modelling a field-scale compressed air energy storage in porous rock reservoirs. In Volume 4: Proceedings of 11th International Conference on Applied Energy, Part 3, Sweden, 2019
Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) is one of the promising methods to store the surplus solar and wind energy in a grid scale . In this study, we used a non...

Estimation of component contributions to total terrestrial water storage change in the Yangtze River basin

Journal Article
Chao, N., Jin, T., Cai, Z., Chen, G., Liu, X., & Wang, Z. (2021)
Estimation of component contributions to total terrestrial water storage change in the Yangtze River basin. Journal of Hydrology, 595, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125661
Terrestrial water storage (TWS) is a key variable in global and regional hydrological cycles. In this study, the TWS changes in the Yangtze River Basin (YRB) were derived usin...

Numerical investigation of cycle performance in compressed air energy storage in aquifers

Journal Article
Yang, L., Cai, Z., Li, C., He, Q., Ma, Y., & Guo, C. (2020)
Numerical investigation of cycle performance in compressed air energy storage in aquifers. Applied Energy, 269, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115044
Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is one of the promising technologies to store the renewable energies such as surplus solar and wind energy in a grid scale. Due to the wid...

Pre-Napier Funded Projects

  • REMEDIATE: a €3.7m EU Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN (2015-2018) €1.1m awarded to Queen’s University Belfast, Co-I)

Current Post Grad projects

Previous Post Grad projects

Non-Napier PhD or MSc by Research supervisions

  • Binbo Xu, Jinan University -Edinburgh Napier University, Guangzhou & Edinburgh, ongoing, 2019-now
  • Lichao Yang, University of Geosciences & Edinburgh Napier University, Beijing & Edinburgh, completed, 2019-2020
  • Chaobin Guo, Tongji University & Edinburgh Napier University, Shanghai and Edinburgh, completed, 2017