Track: Energy

Abstract

Energy is an essential indicator of economic expansion. One way to advance energy needs and environmental sustainability is to develop new, clean, alternative, and possible energy sources. The current study thus proposes a novel power and cooling solar organic Rankine cycle (ORC) with vapour absorption (VAS) and vapour compression refrigeration (VCP) as bottoming cycles. The bottoming cycle uses ammonia–water as the working fluid. In contrast, the topping cycle is driven by ORC based on organic refrigerant. The benefit of the integrated cycle is the production of equivalent refrigerating effects from the two cooling evaporators. The system was analyzed using Engineering Equation Solver (EES) Software. The overall efficiencies were calculated at 38.63 and 42.09 % for energy and exergy, respectively, with total evaporating effect, power output, and coefficient of performance estimated at 1358 kW, 26.65 kW and 2.34, in that order. The simulated results showed a 40 % and 55% rise in energy and exergy efficiencies at increased turbine inlet temperatures. Equally, at a higher generator pressure of 4.75 bar, the coefficient of performance reached 3.046. The results indicated an increased exergetic sustainability index with increasing generator pressure. Other sustainability indicators, such as waste exergy ratio and environmental effect factors, were found to decrease. The proposed cycle was found to have less environmental impact.