A novel geothermal source integrated system to meet the building demands: Exergo-economic and optimization assessment

This study proposes a novel geothermal source integrated system to meet the building demands that combines a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), a geothermal source, and a thermoelectric generator (TEG) to achieve enhanced performance. The system is subjected to exergo-economic examination and optimization to determine its thermal performance and cost-effectiveness. Integrating geothermal energy with SOFC can help reduce waste heat and improve overall system performance. Based on the results, it is determined that the cooling system can generate 161.3 kW for building purposes, and the integrated turbine in the cooling system can also produce 891.9 kW of electrical output. The integrated thermoelectric generator modules produce 418.06 kW. Moreover, hybrid sys-tems' energy and exergy efficiencies are 23.29 % and 19.26 %. The case study of the introduced system indicates that by variation of parameters, the systems have different behaviors from thermodynamic and cost points of view. Therefore, multi-criteria optimum finding according to the genetic algorithm is conducted. The optimi-zation results present that in the selected optimal state while using the ideal state, the net output power and overall cost rate are 193307.12 kW and 77.96 $/h.