Exergetic, exergo-economic, and exergo-environmental analyses of a trigeneration system driven by biomass and natural gas

TLDR: In this paper, the authors studied the thermodynamic, economic, and environmental aspects of a combined cooling, heating, and power generation system empowered by biomass and natural gas, and the results indicated that the exergy efficiency of system is 39.45%, the products cost per exergy unit is 9.71 $ h−1, and products environmental impact per exerg unit is 4422 mpt GJ−1.

Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to study the thermodynamic, economic, and environmental aspects of a integrated system combined cooling, heating, and power generation system empowered by biomass and natural gas. Eco-Indicator 99 method is utilized to quantify the environmental impact. The proposed system consists of four main subsystems producing power, heating, and cooling. Natural gas is mixed with the syngas to enhance its heating value. The results indicate that the exergy efficiency of system is 39.45%, the products cost per exergy unit is 9.71 $ h−1, and the products environmental impact per exergy unit is 4422 mpt GJ−1. Also, when the natural gas mass flow rate-to-syngas mass flow rate ratio increases from 0 to 0.5, the exergy efficiency is found to improve by 71.97%, whereas the products cost per exergy unit and environmental impact per exergy unit of total products are seen to decline by 70.75 and 64.09%, correspondingly. Additionally, the exergy efficiency enhances by 19.48%, while the cost and environmental impact per exergy unit of the total products drop by 13.39 and 13.02%, respectively, as the splitter separation ratio increases from 0 to1.