Energy management of standalone cascaded adsorption-compression refrigeration system using hybrid biomass-solar-wind energies

Abstract

This study examines the energetic and economic feasibility of a new hybrid renewable biomass-solar-wind energy system for driving both cascaded adsorption-compression refrigeration systems compared with its counterpart conventional compression system for the same input energy. Two renewable energy scenarios are proposed: biomass-solar-battery (Scenario-I) and biomass-solar-wind-battery system (Scenario-II) for autonomously driving the cascaded adsorption-compression system. Herein, biomass and thermal waste heat from photovoltaic/thermal collectors are exploited for the adsorption system’s operation. By contrast, the compression unit is propelled by the electric power of the photovoltaic/thermal collectors besides wind energy. In that respect, surplus electricity beyond the battery bank’s charging is converted into heat through an electric heater. These scenarios are investigated and compared using representative meteorological data of New Borg El-Arab city, Egypt. The results demonstrate that Scenario-I is more cost-effective than Scenario-II, which has a cost of refrigeration of 0.235 $ kWh−1 compared to 0.237 $ kWh−1 of Scenario-II. Herein, photovoltaic/thermal collectors in Scenario-I ultimately deliver 100% of the required electric load beside excess electricity of 16.6 kWh. Comparably, Scenario-II delivers surplus electricity of 15 kWh due to the designed fewer numbers of photovoltaic/thermal collectors. Whereas biomass energy covers most of the requisite thermal demand for both scenarios. Moreover, a trade-off between the proposed cascaded adsorption-compression cycle and the renewable-based conventional compression cycle has been conducted. Herein, two proposed systems of photovoltaic-battery (Scenario-III) and photovoltaic-wind-battery (Scenario-IV) are proposed for the conventional compression cycle. The results exhibit that Scenario-III would attain a minimum annual cost of $2714 compared to $4045 for the cascaded system, notably in Scenario-I. In general, using renewable energy mix to drive cooling/refrigeration systems could pave the way towards abating ongoing energy demands and undermining global warming and climate change impacts.