Canadian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences

PEARL publication, 2015

ISSN 2292-3381
CJBAS Vol. 03(04), 134-143, April 2015

Energy and exergy analyses on solar heating cooling and power generation
systems (solar combined cooling, heat and power (CCHP))
Navid Tonekaboni a, Nima Tonekaboni b
a
b

Mechanical Engineering -Energy Conversion, Islamic Azad University Chalos Branch.

Mechanical Engineering -Energy Conversion, Islamic Azad University Noor Branch.

Keywords:

Abstract

Renewable energy,
Exergoeconomic,
Cogeneration system,
Solar power

Increasing environmental pollutions and the expense of fossil fuels necessitates

employment of efficient instruments and easily producible clean sources as abasic
solution to this problem. Cogeneration systems are used for their high performance
with a performance of approximately eighty- five percent Cogeneration production
system with renewable energy source is the best solution to fuel suitable and high cost
Amon all renewable energy sources, use of solar power is of interest. Solar power is the
best choice because it's free and clean. This project illustrates the analyzed exergy and
eregyeconomic simulations of solar hybrid cycle. Thermo economic and
exergoeconomic analysis where used in this research, with exergoeconomic we can
analyze cycle cost, payback period and exergy performance. Case study for this project
was a building with 480 m or square meters area in Zahedan, Iran. In this study, a
small scale hybrid solar heating, cooling and power generation set-up including solar
collector, screw expender auxiliary heater, adsorption chiller, etc., was proposed and
extensively investigated.

1. Introduction
Cogeneration cycle is one of the best choices for high performance in thermodynamic cycles.
This cycle consists of two different mechanisms, one is to combine heat and power (CHP) and the
other is to combine cooling, heating and power generation (CCHP). Combined heat and power
enables saving energy. In This study heat and power were generated respectively. Heat of
generation from electric power is used for district heating or in industry. CCHP system is like CHP
with a big difference of making cool load in it. Cooling load produced in CCHP system is used for
usage in houses, food storage and food industry. ((CCHP system is CHP system plus one adsorption
chiller)), in this system electric power is not used for making cool load in chiller compressor, using
heat of hot water in cogeneration cycles as the base of input source is divided in two part, one is
fossil fuels and other is renewable energy.

Corresponding Author :
E-mail, navid.tonekaboni@yahoo.com

Navid Tonekaboni et al. - Can. J. Basic Appl. Sci. Vol. 03(04), 134-143, April 2015

Solar power as a renewable energy source has been mostly used because solar power is free and
expanded all over the world. In the process, solar energy can be transformed to electric power
directly or indirectly, through the use of some sort of heat engine [1]. But the usually existing
commercial solar thermal plant capacity is more than 500 KW and far away from residential
district. The large scale unit limits its application is small (less than 50 KW). Also, it prevent the
scale efficient utilization of the waste heat.
Over several decade, multi-productions with solar energy systems have been introduced for
many applications with proven environmental and economical benefits. The most popular one is the
hybrid PV/T system which has twofold purpose-firstly, to cool the PV module and thus improve its
electrical performance and secondly to collect the thermal energy which would have otherwise been
lost as heat to the environment. As report by [2] the electrical efficiency of the basic polycrystalline
silicon (pc-Si) PV/T model was found to be 3.2% higher than that of the simple Pc-Si PV module.
Besides photovoltaic CHP system, [3, 4] developed a novel hybrid heat pipe solar collector CHP
system to provide electricity and heating for buildings. The experimental results showed that an
electricity outpout of 1.5 KW and approximately 12 KWH of heat energy will be supplied daily
from this system. This suggested an overall conversion efficiently of 1.5%. On the other hand, [5, 6]
proposed a novel ammonia-water binary mixture thermodynamic cycle capable of producing both
power refrigerant in 1998. Future experimental and theoretical studies [7] showed that exergy
efficiency of these kind of system was more than 50%. [8] proposed a thermodynamic cascade unit
that takes maximal advantage of high temperature input heat produced by solar power is used to
drive a mechanical chiller, this system also can be regarded as a solar hybrid power and cooling
system. Not only hybrid solar heating and power system but also hybrid solar cooling and power
system is faced with major problem that only producing heating or c0oling is not very consistent
with the order of nature. So in several months, the recovery energy will not be used efficiently. Now
many hybrid solar heating has been used in green buildings to make the utilization solar collectors
more sufficient in whole year [9]. Thus is can be seen that tri-generation system including cooling,
heating and power is more rational utilization mode. But there is very little of research on hybrid
solar cooling, heating power system though combined cooling, heating and power (CCHP)
technology has been developed for more than 100 years. Mittelman et al [10] has proposed
combined heating and power approach that employs CPV/T technology and the thermal energy is
wide enough to satisfy the requirement of cooling and heating because the III-V PV cells operated
well under 240 C.

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Exergy analyze is one useful way to find the effect of one source of energy. Exergy analyze in
other way said the efficiency of second law of thermodynamics. Many researcher in all the world
analyze cycles with second law of thermodynamics. The first exergy analyze modeling of CCHP
cycles done with the [11]. This modeling is done with different CCHP system and different load.
2. System description and thermal condition
The studied hybrid solar heating, cooling and power generation system is shown in figure.1. It
consist of three main subsystem, power generation subsystem and waste heat utilization subsystem.
The first subsystem includes a series of solar collectors and assisted gas fired condensing boiler.
If the beam solar radiation is large enough to drive whole system, no assisted gas needed.
Conversely, a gas-fired condensing boiler begins working as an assisted unit to ensure the steady
energy input to the power generation subsystem.
The second subsystem is the power generation unit including a helical screw expander engine
and generator. The collector collect and supply energy, dry saturated, superheated, even wetsaturated steam can be employed as the working fluid in the power cycle. The high-pressure
working medium pushes against the vanes of screw-type expander, converting some of its heat
energy into mechanical power, turning the shaft of generator and producing a net power input.
The third subsystem mainly consist of two heat exchanger, a hot water tank, six 10 KW
adsorption chiller (in summer) and radiation system (in winter). The relatively high temperature
exhaust steam separator, and dry steam flow into the first heat exchanger. Considering that the
waste heat at the temperature 70-90 C abounds in the exhaust steam of helical screw expander, an
adsorption cooling system designed and built by SJTU [12, 13] is chosen for cooling in summer.
In this study we analyze solar combined cooling, heating and power cycle (Solar CCHP) for a
building that consists of 6 apartments with approximately 480 m area. The building is situated in
Zahedan, Iran. Zahedan has hot and dry weather in south-east of Iran making it one of the best
choices for solar technology usage. In solar technology three important parameters are present, first
sunny hours (The city having higher average sunny hours is better for using solar system). In
Zahedan sunny hours is more than 3475 hours in a year being one of cities with most sunny hours in
Iran. Other important parameter is the wind speed, if wind speed is more than 15 Km/h, temperature
in collector cover will decrease very drasticly. In Zahedan average wind speed is 10 Km/h, this
speed is the other important cause of choosing this city. The third parameter or reasonis cold and
cloudy days, as every day with negative temperature is one important danger for the whole system
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that make deforestation in collector. Average number of days in zahedan with negative temperature
is 1 in a year. All these parameters and conditions make Zahedan best city for using solar
technology. Other cities in Iran can also be using solar power, but Zahedan is best for this
technology.
3. Case study (Building)
For every energy and exergy analysis at first a case study is being done in a zone with estimated
weather condition and cooling, heating and power loads. In solar CCHP analysis we calculated
these loads very precisly, every two weeks for one year.
As mentioned before, in this project case study is a building with 480 m area in Zahedan. This
building has six 80 meters apartments in 3 floors. First work of the project was to calculate heating,
cooling and electric powers, every two weeks for one year. These measurements are illustrated in
table 1.
Table 1. avarage cooling, heating and electric loads for 480 meters building in zahedan
Month
15 March - 1 April
1 April 15 April
15 April- 1 May
1 May- 15 May
15 May- 1 June
1 June-15 June
15 June-1 July
1 July- 15 July
15 July- 1 August
1 August- 15 August
15 August-1 September
1 September-15 September
15 September- 1 October
1 October-15 October
15 October-1 November
1 November-15 November
15 November- 1 December
1 December-15 December
15 December-1 January
1 January-15 January
15 January-1 February
1 February-15 February
15 February-1 March
1 March-15 March

Electric load (KW)

Heating load (KW)

58
63
67
68
64
63
69
63
59
68
60
60
57
62
64
52
51
46
43
64
63
66
69
70

80
82
70
63
60
44
30
32
36
46
47
76
99
102
113
108
120
184
194
200
184
162
130
109

Cooling load (KW)

12
16
19.5
28
53
69
95
98
110
94
108
89
73
52
33
20
0
0
0
0
0
0
8
10

After these calculations, we estimated the collector area from that. In order to make
sure that the collector estimate is sufficiently accurate we need high electrical charge. The
electrical charge enables us to estimate and determine the turbine size, after that
calculated flow rate of hot water that turbine needs is done. A simple hybrid solar energy
system has been schematically shown in figure 1.
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Figure 1. hybrid solar energy system

4. Analysis
A simple hybrid solar energy system has been schematically shown in figure 1. Some typical
state points in the following illustration are also shown. The T-S diagram of the arrangement for the
case that reheat pressure is greater than one is reality been. Saturated water from the feed water tank
is heated from state 6 to state 1 in solar collector and gas boiler and then is supplied to helical screw
expander, wet steam does work by expansion and expands to state 2. The separated dry steam is
sent to the first exchanger and is condensed to point 4. After heat exchanging, the latent energy of
dry steam is used to produce hot water which can drive adsorption chiller in summer or supply
heating in winter. Subsequently, the wet steam flows into the second heat exchanger and produce
domestic hot water. The finally condensed water at state 5 flows into feed water tank and is sent to
solar collector by a pump.

Figure 2. thermodynamic cycles in T-S diagram

In order to perform energy and exergy analyses, following assumption are involved:

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The expansion process in the helical screw expander is non isentropic and the loss in the heat
engine is considered. The relative internal efficiency and generator efficiency and generator
efficiency are assumed to be constant.
Neglecting the heat loss of heat exchangers and the effectiveness of two heat exchangers is
constant and has the same value.
It is assumed that cooling capacity and the efficiency of adsorption chiller are just affected by the
temperature of driving hot water. The effect of environment temperature on adsorption chiller are
completely neglected.
Because the pump work in this system is very small, it is neglected and the state of point 3, 5 and
6 are the same.
Neglect the pipeline heat loss in the system.
For analysis we should have point dryness and temperature that shown in table 2.
Table 2. set points dryness and temperatures in summer (winter)
Temperature(C)
Dryness()
(180)180
0.10
(90 )90
0.23
(90 )90
0
(90 )90
0.04
(45) 88.8
0
(83.3) 82.1
0
(10)(78)-

State
1
2
345
6
7
8
9
10

4.1. Energy analysis

Based on the first law of thermodynamics, the energy analysis is processed in this section.
Incident beam radiation on solar collector is presented by:

(1)
Then the thermal efficiency of solar collector is calculated with the following equation:

( )

Followed by the useful solar energy transferred to fluid media:

( )

The mechanical energy received from steam of the screw expander is

( (

(4)

)]

In second step we calculate the heating, cooling loads with the following equations:
For cooling loads
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( )

=-5.45358+0.17373

For calculated cop of cooling cycle

( )

Cop=0.21821+0.00251

For heating loads

( )

For domestic hot water

( )

Thus, the total energy efficiency of the studied system is

( )

All energy analysis calculated results show in table 3.

Table 3. calculated result for energy loss, energy deliverd, energy recivied and first low efficiency.
Energy
loss Energy
delivered Energy
received First low efficiency
Subsystem
(KW)
(KW)
(KW)
(%)
Collector
139.94
245.4
385.34
63.68
Auxiliary heater
0
24.4
24.4
100
Turbine
0.5
31.2
32.00
97.5
Chiller
88.6
87.6
176.2
49.72
Overall system
192.3
210.00
402.3
52.2

4.2. Exergy analysis

Based on the second law of thermodynamics, the exergy analysis is processed in this
section.The exergy released by the solar radiation is presented by

)]

F is the dilution factor.

Useful exergy delivered by solar collector is:

)(

The exergy received by steam in the screw expander is:

(

)(

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In next step calculate the exergy for cooling and heating Cooling exergy in summer is
=

Heating exergy in winter is

The total exergy efficiency of the studied system is

All exergy analysis calculated results are presented in table 4

Table 4. calculated result for exergy loss, exergy deliverd, exergy recivied and Second low efficiency
Exergy
Second low efficiency
Subsystem
Exergy loss(KW) Exergy delivered (KW)
received(KW)
(%)
Collector
139.94
245.4
385.34
63.68
Auxiliary heater 0
24.4
24.4
100
Turbine
0.5
31.2
32.00
97.5
Chiller
88.6
87.6
176.2
49.72
Overall system
192.3
210.00
402.3
52.2

4.3. Cost analysis

At first life cycle cost is calculated

Considering the price of energy production including cooling, heating, hot water and power, the
total income of the system is known. Considering the time value of the capital, the dynamic
payback period of investment is :
[(

) ]
(

The capital cost of various plant items in the present system is listed in tables 5and 6

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Table 5. Capital cost of the plant item of the system
Capital item

Price)$(

Parabolic through solar collector

Turbine and collector
Auxiliary heater
Adsorption chiller
pump
Cooling tower
Storage battery and invert
Miscellaneous expenses

145458
49460
25450
78600
842
736.5
9300
1620

Table 6. Cash flow analysis parameters for the present system

Parameters
Price ($)
Capital cost
352650
Annual power generation income
15680
Annual refrigeration income
26500
Annual heating income
53400
Annual domestic hot water income
9760
Annual natural gas cost
681.27
Annual electricity cost
425.5
Annual worth for the life cycle cost
22950
Payback period
18.84

Upon calculations the energy and exergy values are shown in figures 3 and 4.

Fig 3-4. Analysis exergy and energy for one year

5. Result and discussion

In this study, a hybrid solar heating, cooling, and power generation system based on helical
expander and adsorption chiller is proposed. With analysis using the first law and second law of
thermodynamics the average efficiency of first law is 52.2 % and with the exergy analysis the
second law efficiency is calculated to be 10.4 %. After calculating the expenses,economy of this
cycle and the payback period of this cycle is 18.84 years, the obtained average time for payback in
domestic service is not suitable. For HVAC system in domestic use payback period average must be
aroend 10 years. The cause for long payback time period is high cost of solar collectors and high
number of collectors used in this project approximately 900 (m).
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Solar system efficiency was base on 3 important parameters; first, sunny hours per year,
second, wind speed and finally third is the negative temperature day, all these parameters are
suitable for using solar technology in south area in Iran. We report that this technology in south of
Iran has better efficiency than other parts of this country, if the collector costs are lowered or
collectors with higher efficiency the pp (payback) period came down. With the increase of the solar
energy usage and improvements made in solar collector technology using this system is cheap and
cost effective and makes low payback period for hybrid solar (CCHP) system.
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