Exergoeconomic Assessment, Parametric Study and Optimization of a Novel Solar Trigeneration System

An exergoeconomic analysis is performed for a solar trigeneration system in which the electric power, refrigeration power and domestic hot water are produced by a cascade organic Rankine cycle, an absorption chiller, which is accompanied by ammonia turbine, and a heat recovery cycle respectively, after optimizing the length of PTCs by dynamic modeling analysis. A parametric study is also carried out to investigate the effects of such significant parameters as degree of superheat at the turbine's inlet of power cycle, condenser temperature of power cycle, operating pressure of the refrigerating cycle and operating fluid temperature of the main cycle on the energy and exergy efficiencies and the exergoeconomic performance of the system. Finally a multi objective optimization from the viewpoint of exergoeconomics is reported by using genetic algorithm. As a result of exergoeconomic analysis of the system, ORC Heat Exchanger (ORC Ex), Cooling Tower2 (C. T2), Absorber (Abs) and Reflux Condenser (Ref Cond) exhibit the worst exergoeconomic performance. For the overall system, the capital cost rate, the exergy destruction cost rate and the exergoeconomic factor are calculated to be about 37.98 $/hr, 122.25 $/hr and 23.7%, respectively.