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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Date


34 results

Response of soil bacterial community composition and its associated geochemical parameters to rapid short-term cyclic groundwater-level oscillations: soil column experiments

Journal Article
Xia, X., Cheng, L., Zhu, Y., Liu, Y., Wang, K., Ding, A., …Zuo, L. (2020)
Response of soil bacterial community composition and its associated geochemical parameters to rapid short-term cyclic groundwater-level oscillations: soil column experiments. Vadose Zone Journal, 19(1), https://doi.org/10.1002/vzj2.20011
Groundwater-level oscillations change geochemical conditions, carbon cycling processes and bacterial community composition, and these changes may vary vertically with depth in...

A process for deriving high quality cellulose nanofibrils from Water hyacinth invasive species

Journal Article
Sun, D., Onyianta, A. J., O’Rourke, D., Perrin, G., Popescu, C., Saw, L. H., …Dorris, M. (2020)
A process for deriving high quality cellulose nanofibrils from Water hyacinth invasive species. Cellulose, 27, 3727-3740. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-020-03038-4
In this study, surface chemistry, the morphological properties, water retention values, linear viscoelastic properties, crystallinity index, tensile strength and thermal prope...

The application of the yield approach to study slurry migration in drill cuttings waste underground disposal

Journal Article
Guo, C., Wang, X., Li, C., Zhang, K., & Cai, Z. (2020)
The application of the yield approach to study slurry migration in drill cuttings waste underground disposal. Journal of Cleaner Production, 254, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.120144
The underground disposal of drill cuttings waste is a common practice for the gas/oil industry to achieve zero-discharge sustainable development. In this study, a numerical mo...

Finding Fair Negotiation Algorithms to Reduce Peak Electricity Consumption in Micro Grids

Conference Proceeding
Powers, S. T., Meanwell, O., & Cai, Z. (2019)
Finding Fair Negotiation Algorithms to Reduce Peak Electricity Consumption in Micro Grids. In PAAMS 2019: Advances in Practical Applications of Survivable Agents and Multi-Agent Systems: The PAAMS Collection, 269-272. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24209-1_28
Reducing peak electricity consumption is important to maximise use of renewable energy sources, and reduce the total amount of capacity required on a grid. Most approaches use...

Assessing the capacity of biochar to stabilize copper and lead in contaminated sediments using chemical and extraction methods

Journal Article
Wang, M., Ren, L., Wang, D., Zuansi, C., Xia, X., & Ding, A. (2019)
Assessing the capacity of biochar to stabilize copper and lead in contaminated sediments using chemical and extraction methods. Journal of Environmental Sciences, 79, 91-99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jes.2018.11.007
Because of its high adsorption capacity, biochar has been used to stabilize heavy metals when remediating contaminated soils; to date, however, it has seldom been used to reme...

Overview of porous media/metal foam application in fuel cells and solar power systems

Journal Article
Tan, W. C., Saw, . L. H., Thiam, H. S., Xuan, J., Cai, Z., & Yew, M. C. (2018)
Overview of porous media/metal foam application in fuel cells and solar power systems. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 96, 181-197
Fuel cells and solar energy are promising candidates for electricity generation. It is forecast that fuel cells and solar power systems will play an important role in reducing...

Novel thermal management system using mist cooling for lithium-ion battery packs

Journal Article
Saw, L. H., Poon, H. M., Thiam, H. S., Cai, Z., Chong, W. T., Pambudi, N. A., & King, Y. J. (2018)
Novel thermal management system using mist cooling for lithium-ion battery packs. Applied Energy, 223, 146-158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.04.042
Thermal management system is crucial for a Lithium-ion battery pack as cycle life, driving range of electric vehicle, usable capacity and safety are heavily dependent on the o...

Numerical investigation for optimizing segmented micro-channel heat sink by Taguchi-Grey method

Journal Article
Naqiuddin, N. H., Saw, L. H., Yew, M. C., Yusof, F., Poon, H. M., Cai, Z., & Thiam, H. S. (2018)
Numerical investigation for optimizing segmented micro-channel heat sink by Taguchi-Grey method. Applied Energy, 222, 437-450. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.03.186
• Novel segmented micro-channel heat sink has been designed. • CFD models have been developed to simulate the performance of the segmented micro-channel. • Enhanced the coolin...

Numerical investigation of a joint approach to thermal energy storage and compressed air energy storage in aquifers

Journal Article
Guo, C., Zhang, K., Pan, L., Cai, Z., Li, C., & Li, Y. (2017)
Numerical investigation of a joint approach to thermal energy storage and compressed air energy storage in aquifers. Applied Energy, 203, 948-958. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.06.030
Different from conventional compressed air energy storage (CAES) systems, the advanced adiabatic compressed air energy storage (AA-CAES) system can store the compression heat ...

Is China's fifth-largest inland lake to dry-up? Incorporated hydrological and satellite-based methods for forecasting Hulun Lake water levels

Journal Article
Cai, Z., Jin, T., Li, C., Ofterdinger, U., Zhang, S., Ding, A., & Li, J. (2016)
Is China's fifth-largest inland lake to dry-up? Incorporated hydrological and satellite-based methods for forecasting Hulun Lake water levels. Advances in water resources, 94, 185-199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2016.05.010
Hulun Lake, China’s fifth-largest inland lake, experienced severe declines in water level in the period of 2000-2010. This has prompted concerns whether the lake is drying up ...

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