Exergoeconomic comparison of three novel trigeneration systems using SOFC, biomass and solar energies

Abstract

In this paper, comparison of exergetic performance and exergoeconomic optimization of the three novel trigeneration systems are presented. The systems considered are integrated SOFC-trigeneration, integrated biomass-trigeneration, and integrated solar-trigeneration plants. This study compares the performance of the systems considered when there is only electrical power and the efficiency improvement of these systems when there is a trigeneration. This study shows that the integrated SOFC-trigeneration system has the highest electrical exergy efficiency among the three systems. Alternatively, when trigeneration is used, the efficiencies of all three systems considered increased considerably. The maximum trigeneration exergy efficiency of the SOFC-trigeneration system is 64.5% while it is around 60% and 56% for the integrated biomass-trigeneration system and integrated solar-trigeneration system. Also, the cost per exergy unit of the SOFC-trigeneration system is the highest while this cost is the lowest for the biomass-trigeneration system. In addition, this study shows that the CO2 emissions in kg per MWh and CO2 emissions cost in $/MWh of electrical power are high for the biomass-trigeneration systems. However, by considering the emissions per MWh of trigeneration, their values drop significantly.