Exergoeconomic appraisement, sensitivity analysis, and multi-objective optimization of a solar-driven generation plant for yielding electricity and cooling load

Abstract

Solar energy-driven generation units can assist in moderating energy-linked environmental issues. For this target, a new solar heliostat-based generation unit is suggested for electricity generation as the crucial product. A heliostat-based solar unit with a closed Brayton cycle and thermal energy storage unit is coupled with a Kalina cycle and an absorption refrigeration unit through a single-effect absorption chiller as an inimitable series of power plants. Exergy, economic, and energy investigations are carried out to scrutinize the efficiency of the introduced unit, and a thorough parametric evaluation is performed. Multi-aspect optimization is implemented to identify the optimum decision values, regarding four various scenarios, namely exergy performance/ sum unit cost of the product, exergy performance/ coefficient of performance, NPV/exergy performance, and exergy performance/ cooling load. In this regard, The Grey Wolf Optimizer is the multi-objective optimization method, and TOPSIS, LINMAP, and Shannon entropy approaches assist the optimization procedure in acquiring the optimal solution in each scenario. The results indicate that the optimized exergy performance, coefficient of performance, and sum unit cost of the product are computed as 33.48 %, 0.817, and 3.44 $/GJ, respectively.