Abstract
In recent decades, growing concerns about global warming and climate change effects have led to specific directives, especially in Europe, promoting the use of primary energy-saving techniques and renewable energy systems. The increasingly stringent requirements for carbon dioxide reduction have led to a more widespread adoption of distributed energy systems. In particular, besides renewable energy systems for power generation, one of the most effective techniques used to face the energy-saving challenges has been the adoption of polygeneration plants for combined heating, cooling, and electricity generation. This technique offers the possibility to achieve a considerable enhancement in energy and cost savings as well as a simultaneous reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. However, the use of small-scale polygeneration systems does not ensure the achievement of mandatory, but sometimes conflicting, aims without the proper sizing and operation of the plant. This paper is focused on a methodology based on vector optimization algorithms and developed by the authors for the identification of optimal polygeneration plant solutions. To this aim, a specific calculation algorithm for the study of cogeneration systems has also been developed. This paper provides, after a detailed description of the proposed methodology, some specific applications to the study of combined heat and power (CHP) and organic Rankine cycle (ORC) plants, thus highlighting the potential of the proposed techniques and the main results achieved.
Highlights
In recent decades, the world energy consumption has continuously increased, especially because of the strong economic growth of non-OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries [1,2]
The Pareto optimal front was depicted, highlighting how solutions that maximize the total energy savings are characterized by an increased payback period
It should be noted that low Total PES (TPES) increases can be achieved with a high worsening of the payback period
Summary
The world energy consumption has continuously increased, especially because of the strong economic growth of non-OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries [1,2]. In this scenario, a key role for primary energy saving and greenhouse gas emission reduction could be played by polygeneration systems [12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. It shows the primary energy saving (PES) as a function of the plant’s electrical efficiency (i.e., engine size if ON/OFF operation is assumed) for ηeREF = 0.46, ηb = 0.9, and the different ratios of the available nominal thermal power exploited by the final user.
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