Modeling and simulation of a novel combined heat and power system with absorption heat pump based on solar thermal power tower plant

Abstract

In this paper a novel solar combined heat and power (CHP) system incorporating absorption heat pump (AHP) driven by mid-temperature solar heat and exhaust heat is proposed to improve solar energy utilization and electricity power generation. To validate thermodynamic performance of the proposed system, a case study is carried out based on 1 MW solar tower power plant located in Beijing. Depending on the well-developed mathematical model in accordance with actual equipment, the relevant module is coded in TRNSYS application environment. Besides, control and operation strategy is deeply analyzed to efficiently utilize solar energy with principal of cascade utilization. The dynamic simulation effectively predicts thermodynamic performance under the different operation modes in a typical winter day. Results indicate that flexible heating supply of the proposed system can meet well with user-generated heating loads. The AHP system recovers the condensate heat of 914 MJ with the average COP of 1.52. The proposed system generates the additional power of 217 kWh due to the regenerative cycle. Accompanying with power generation of 6214 kWh and useable thermal energy of 14502 MJ of the proposed system, the overall utilization efficiency of solar energy is up to 15.96% with the increase of 4.55 percentages.