Solar-driven liquid air power plant modeling, design space exploration, and multi-objective optimization

S. Yang

Energy, 2022, vol. 246, issue C

Abstract: This work presents a steady-state model of a generic liquid air power plant integrated with parabolic trough solar collectors, explores the plant design space, and maximizes its energy and exergy performance. The model is verified against the round trip efficiency of various plant configurations reported in the literature, and the design space exploration entails quantifying the effects of plant mass flow rates, operating pressures, and heat exchanger inventory allocation on the global performance. The multi-objective optimization consists of maximizing both the round-trip and exergy efficiency and identifying their trade-offs via the Pareto front. Results demonstrate the presence of a critical liquid air mass flow rate beyond which reverse cooling is instigated and the plant performance is degraded. Furthermore, the two objective functions in the optimization are shown to compete against each other, although the round trip efficiency is deemed as a more practical performance metric while the maximum exergy efficiency design better exploits solar energy as a high-grade heat source. The best design for the plant layout under analysis yields the round trip and exergy efficiency of 20% and 59%, respectively, with the critical mass flow rate of 0.8 kg/s.

Keywords: Design space exploration; Exergy; Hybrid power plant; Liquid air; Multi-objective optimization; Solar energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:246:y:2022:i:c:s0360544222002274

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2022.123324

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