4E analysis of an integrated solar-biomass heating system: A case study in rural housing of northern China

Abstract

Primary energy shortage and serious environmental pollution have aroused considerable interest in the investigation of renewable energy heating systems. The integrated solar-biomass heating system has been a proven solution for this. This present work focuses on demonstrating the sustainable potential of integrated solar-biomass heating system into a rural housing to stabilize its performance and assessing its economic and environmental benefits. Accordingly, a 4E (energy, exergy, economic, and environmental) analysis was conducted to analyze and evaluate the performance of the system based on the in-situ testing. The results demonstrate that the presented system can provide an improved thermal environment with an average indoor temperature of 16.49 °C. During the testing period, solar energy and biomass contributed 49.19 % and 50.81 % of the total energy demand of 6972.23 MJ, respectively. Subsequently, the average exergy efficiency of the integrated system, the solar heaters, the biomass boiler, and the radiators were 3.35 %, 2.65 %, 12.42 %, and 89.16 %, respectively. Besides, the presented system can save 1749.29 kg of standard coal every year, and the life-cycle carbon footprint was 78.65 % less than that of the traditional coal-fired boiler-based heating system. These results indicate that the integrated system can significantly reduce primary energy consumption and provide remarkable economic and environmental benefits.