DEVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT OF INTEGRATED RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEM WITH HYDROGEN STORAGE FOR AUTONOMOUS AND MOBILE 3D PRINTING SYSTEM

3D concrete printing technology provides an ideal solution for resilient infrastructure development in critical and emergency situations; however, access and energy are critical challenges in such conditions. This study presented the design of an integrated renewable energy system with hydrogen storage for a unique mobile and autonomous 3D printing system for construction printing. The system has been designed to fulfil the off-grid energy requirement, such as material synthesis, printing, computation, communication, and surveillance/monitoring. The designed energy system has been analysed to produce a 3D printed structure with two different local materials; Construction and Demolishing Waste (CDW) based geopolymer concrete and direct printing of local materials. Due to the energy-intensive process and higher energy requirement for the pre-processing of waste to produce geopolymers, the designed system is more favourable for the direct printing of local materials. With the designed steady-state standard operating conditions the designed integrated system of 5.36kW can print 2.86m³ of the final structure from direct printing of local material and 0.22m³ of geopolymer based concrete structure in 24 hours. The analyse feasibility and production capacity of the designed system, and the overall performance of the system are also analysed for varying solar irradiance (I) conditions.