Energy, exergy, economic, and environmental analysis of an organic Rankine cycle integrating with infectious medical waste incinerator

Abstract

This work presents the analysis of energy, economic, environmental (3E), and exergy (4E) impacts for verifying a single implication value of renewable energy technology. An infectious medical waste incinerator combined with an organic Rankine cycle with R-245fa as working fluid is investigated the overall impacts. The experimental energy result are used to analyze an exergy efficiency of the quality level, a life cycle assessment (LCA) under the environmental effect, a levelized cost of the economic perspective, and a 4E decision score. The study results implied that the organic Rankine cycle-incinerator system could manage a refuse-derived fuel type 3 (RDF-3) of 184.42 kg/h from infectious medical waste to produce 23.65 kWe of power at an energy efficiency 0.91%, with at the same time, an exergy efficiency was approximately 0.89%. The LCA was characterized with the use of steel at a single score of approximately 0.00035Pt. The economic value was implied from a levelized energy cost of 0.153 USD/kWh under the 3E model, which was lower than that of a Feed-in Tariff (FiT) model for the solid-waste power plant in Thailand of 0.209 USD/kWh. A levelized exergy costing per life cycle assessment of 0.0000986 USD Pt/kWh2 was investigated under the 4E model.