Thermo-economic-environmental analysis of a new tri-generation seasonal system with gas turbine prime mover based on municipal solid waste gasification

To protect environment, proper use of municipal solid waste (MSW) is necessary and it needs to introduce new seasonal tri-generation systems to produce power, cooling, and heating with gas turbine prime mover. The fuel is supplied by gasification of MSW. Here, to improve the gasification process, the dryer and preheater of the gasification agent are used, so that all their required energies are supplied from inside the system. The design and validation of tri-generation systems have been done for three different ambient conditions, such as: the coldest day of the year, the cold seasons and the warm seasons of the year. For the coldest day of the year with Gas Turbine Based System (GTBS), the Energy Utilization Factor (EUF) and exergy efficiency are 47.62% and 20.42%, respectively. In addition, the lowest total cost rate is related to GTBS in the cold season as 106.8 $/h. From thermo-environmental view point, the GTBS prevents the release of 9233 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, annually. Also in the current work, a parametric study has been performed to find the effects of important decision parameters such as the temperature of the exhaust gases from the combustion chamber and the temperature of the gasifier on different evaluation parameters. The parametric study shows that by increasing the gasifier temperature and inlet gas temperature of GT, the EUF increases and the exergy efficiency and cost rate of the whole system decrease.