Design and thermodynamic assessment of a solar powered energy–food–water nexus driven multigeneration system

• Main Authors: Farhat Mahmood, Yusuf Bicer, Tareq Al-Ansari
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2021-11-01
• Series: Energy Reports
• Subjects: Solar energy; Organic rankine cycle; Desalination; Hydrogen; Agriculture greenhouse
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352484721003115

Decentralized food production can lead to the optimum and resilient utilization of resources while increasing the system performance, which can be made possible with the implementation of renewables. This study demonstrates a solar-powered multigeneration system designed to produce electrical power, freshwater from seawater, oxygen, hydrogen, and space cooling for a greenhouse application. The system’s main components include a Parabolic trough collector, organic Rankine cycle, multi-stage flash desalination unit, water electrolyzer, hydrogen-oxy combustor, thermal energy storage, absorption cooling system, and a greenhouse structure. For the system’s continuous operation, thermal energy storage and hydrogen-oxy combustor are used as a backup energy utilizing the hydrogen and oxygen produced from the electrolyzer. The integrated system is thermodynamically analyzed using mass, energy, entropy, and exergy balance equations. Furthermore, specified system outputs are evaluated by conducting parametric studies related to solar radiation, ambient temperature, and greenhouse area. The results of the analysis demonstrate that by installing a parabolic trough collector on an area of 80,000 m2, the integrated system delivers an electrical power of 2.70 MW, approximately 72.2 m3/day of freshwater, 796 kW of space cooling, 6420 kg/day of oxygen, and 802.3 kg/day of hydrogen. The overall system energy and exergy efficiencies are 41.0% and 28.4%, respectively. The system is designed in a way that it can be scaled up or down as a part of a decentralized food production system.