Cleaner production of combined cooling, heating, power and water for isolated buildings with an innovative hybrid (solar, wind and LPG fuel) system

Abstract

An innovative hybrid (renewable and non-renewable) energy system for cleaner production of combined cooling, heating, power and fresh water of isolated (not connected to electricity, gas and water grids) buildings in an Island is proposed here. The system consists of photovoltaic (PV) panels, wind turbines, batteries and micro-CHP units to provide electrical demand. The hybrid system also contained evacuated tube (ET) collectors, micro-CHP units, gas water heater and hot water storage tanks (HWST) for supplying heating demand. An electrical chiller also provides cooling demand. A reverse osmosis (RO) system is used for the production of desalinated water. To estimate the chiller and RO system electricity consumption during each operating point Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is applied. Results show that the innovative combined ANN and PSO optimizing methods decreased the run time for about 10%. Furthermore the effect of using excess heat in preheating of RO feedwater which reduces RO electricity consumption is investigated. RO feed water preheating decreased the annual RO electricity consumption for 733 kWh/year (4.95%). Modeling and optimizing the proposed novel hybrid system depict that by optimum selection of hybrid system equipment, 43.3% of electrical load and 43.6% of heating load are provided by renewable systems and the rest are generated by LPG fuel. This shows that 67.3% saving in fossil fuel consumption and about 73 361 kg/year (67% compared to that for the traditional system) reduction in CO2 production are reached. Change in optimum selected equipment with change in fuel (LPG) cost and ambient conditions are also investigated.