4E assessment of integrated photovoltaic/thermal-based adsorption-electrolyzer for cooling and green hydrogen production

An energetic, exergetic, economic, and environmental multicriteria evaluation of the feasibility for an integrated system comprised of an adsorption system and proton exchange membrane electrolyzer operating via photovoltaic/thermal collectors is introduced. The present system produces concurrent green hydrogen, cooling, and hot water under the meteorological conditions of Alexandria, Egypt. The generated electricity from photovoltaic/ thermal collectors drives the electrolyzer for hydrogen production. The waste heat from photovoltaic/thermal collectors drives the adsorption unit during summer for cooling purposes, while in winter, it is used for domestic hot water supply. The adopted analysis is built in Simulink and consequently justified with existing literature. The transient variation of temperature profiles, cooling capacity, heating power, COP, input and output exergies, energetic and exergetic efficiencies are investigated. Investigating the daily performance of the adsorption cooling system during the summer exhibits an average daily COP of 0.47 and a system cooling capacity of about 7 kW. The results reported that the adopted system annually yields cooling, heating, and hydrogen of 8282 kWh, 1723 kWh, and 626 kg, respectively. Moreover, it is exhibited that the present system could attain annual energetic and exergetic efficiencies of 12.3% and 10.6%, respectively. The proposed system demonstrated a substantial payback period of 0.8 years and carbon dioxide mitigation of 52.2 tons. Consequently, combining the photovoltaic/thermal collectors with adsorption cooling systems and electrolyzers could be pronouncedly appropriate for multigeneration systems.