Enhancement of solar energy use by an integrated system for five useful outputs: System assessment

Abstract

In this paper, we present a newly developed integrated solar energy based system with a supercritical geothermal, a Brayton cycle gas turbine power plant with heat recovery system, and a thermochemical copper chlorine (Cu-Cl) hydrogen production cycle. The integrated system is capable of producing multiple useful outputs. Solar and geothermal energy sources are utilized with a Brayton cycle with heat recovery system to produce hydrogen, heat, domestic hot water, electricity, and fresh water. Hydrogen is considered to be produced at industrial scale for commercial purposes. Other useful commodities are considered to be utilized for applications in the community which is located in Larderello, Italy. A supercritical geothermal system, a Braytoncycle gas turbine power plant with heat recovery, a parabolic trough concentrated solar power (CSP) plant, a multi-effect desalination (MED) unit, a residential heat pump, and a thermochemical Cu-Cl hydrogen production plant are designed, developed, and investigated. Subsystems and the overall system are simulated for the selected location with various software packages. Energy and exergy approaches are applied to thermodynamically analyze the components, subsystems, and the overall system. The parametric studies are carried out to understand the effects of various parameters on the overall system and its subsystem performances. The overall system is evaluated to operate at 52.6% energy and 47.1% exergy efficiencies for the average ambient conditions for Larderello in Italy.