Performance comparison of three trigeneration systems using organic rankine cycles

Fahad A. Al-Sulaiman, Feridun Hamdullahpur and Ibrahim Dincer

Energy, 2011, vol. 36, issue 9, 5741-5754

Abstract: In this paper, energetic performance comparison of three trigeneration systems is presented. The systems considered are SOFC-trigeneration, biomass-trigeneration, and solar-trigeneration systems. 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 trigeneration. Different key output parameters are examined: energy efficiency, net electrical power, electrical to heating and cooling ratios, and (GHG) GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions. This study shows that the SOFC-trigeneration system has the highest electrical efficiency among the three systems. Alternatively, when trigeneration is used, the efficiencies of all three systems considered increase considerably. The maximum trigeneration efficiency of the SOFC-trigeneration system is around 76% while it is around 90% for the biomass-trigeneration system. On the other hand, the maximum trigeneration efficiencies of the solar-trigeneration system is around 90% for the solar mode, 45% for storage and storage mode, and 41% for the storage mode. In addition, this study shows that the emissions of CO2 in kg per MWh of electrical power are high for the biomass-trigeneration and SOFC-trigeneration systems. However, by considering the emissions per MWh of trigeneration, their values drop to less than one fourth.

Keywords: Combined cooling heating and power; Trigeneration; Organic rankine cycle; Solid oxide fuel cell; Biomass; Solar energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054421100380X
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:36:y:2011:i:9:p:5741-5754

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2011.06.003

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 ().