Energy, exergy, and exergoeconomic analysis of a polygeneration system driven by solar energy with a thermal energy storage tank for power, heating, and freshwater production

Abstract

A trigeneration system based on parabolic trough solar collectors and thermal energy storage tank is devised for simultaneous power, heating, and freshwater production. The proposed system is analyzed from energy, exergy, and exergoeconomic viewpoints. Moreover, a parametric analysis was applied to evaluate the effects of some basic thermodynamic parameters cycle performance. Also, the optimum performance of the system in two optimization scenarios is found by applying the multi-objective genetic algorithm and using LINMAP decision-making method. The results revealed that the system could yield net output power, heating capacity, and freshwater rate of370.1kW,2423kW, and1.34kg/s, respectively. The energy and exergy efficiencies, coefficient of performance, and the total cost rate of the product are obtained as34.78%,13.42%,0.49, and176.73$/h. Also, it is revealed that the solar section is responsible for56% of the overall exergy destruction rate. The parametric study showed that increment of pinch point temperature of RORC evaporator results in lower energy and exergy efficiencies and higher total cost rate of products. Also, the final optimal solution selected by the LINMAP method is a maximum exergy efficiency of19.87% and the minimum cost rate of157.73$/h for the second optimization scenario.