Thermoeconomic and exergoenvironmental sustainability of a power-cooling organic Rankine cycle with ejector system

Abstract

The study presents a power-cooling organic Rankine cycle with an ejector system (ORCPCES). The objective is to determine the thermodynamic, economic and sustainability of the ORCPCES from the manufacturing, commissioning and decommissioning phases. Component-wise modelling was first performed based on the exergy concept. The system simulation was carried out using a developed source code in Engineering Equation Solver (EES). The refrigerant leakages and the material component impact on the environment were evaluated at all phases of the plant life cycle. The results indicate that the evaporator cooling rate (ECR) and the power-cooling efficiency (PCE) varied from 120.8 to 153 kW and 28.87 to 34.43 % across the refrigerants with the highest PCE and exergy efficiency obtained using R1234ze. The maximum power output was obtained using R1234ze. The overall environmental impact due to the components occurred at5.1×105mPts, 5.24×105mPts and 5.4×105mPts for R245fa, R1234yf, and R1234ze, respectively, while 4.01×105mPts 7.81×104mPts and9.33×105mPts was due to the working fluids in that order. The unit cost of electricity (UCOE) across the refrigerants varies from 0.181$/kWh to 0.2291$/kWh with the least UCOE, 0.181$/kWh obtained using R1234ze. The highest exergetic sustainability index of 0.56 was achieved using R1234ze.

Keywords

• Exergoenvironmental
• Turbine
• Refrigerants
• Energy
• Life-cycle