Techno-economic analysis and case study of combined heat and power systems in a wastewater treatment plant

Joseph Elio and Ryan J. Milcarek

Energy, 2022, vol. 260, issue C

Abstract: Combined heat and power systems can reduce the energy and carbon footprints of wastewater treatment plants by reducing their electricity demand and direct methane emissions. However, large capital costs can be a deterrent for installation of such systems. Therefore, this work sizes a combined heat and power system based on annual and hourly biogas production data, thermal demand data, and electrical demand data of a wastewater treatment plant located in the Southwestern U.S. The annual analysis sizes a combined heat and power system to satisfy 60% of the facility's thermal demand and yields 13.94 million USD in savings over a 20 year analysis. Conversely, the hourly analysis sizes a combined heat and power system to satisfy 75% of the facility's thermal demand and results in 8.92 million USD in savings over a 20 year analysis. This discrepancy between the annual and hourly analyses is partially due to the biogas and natural gas consumptions. This paper shows that an annual analysis cannot accurately estimate combined heat and power sizing and savings for a wastewater treatment plant due to high variability in biogas production and time of use demand costs.

Keywords: Combined heat and power (CHP); Biogas; Internal combustion engine; Wastewater treatment plant (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544222020011
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:260:y:2022:i:c:s0360544222020011

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2022.125106

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().