Energy, exergy, exergoeconomic, exergoenvironmental (4E) assesment, sensitivity analysis and multi-objective optimization of a PTC -tehran climate data case study

Parabolic trough collector (PTC) is the most proven industry-scale solar generation technology today available. In this research, the performance of a PTC for different months of Tehran city was investigated using Energy, exergy, exergoeconomic, and exergoenvironmental (4 E) analyzes. The results of the 4 E analyzes show that the PTC had the highest energy efficiency (73.6%) in July and the highest exergy efficiency (20.11%) in January. From the exergoeconomic and exergoenvironmental analyzes, it is determined that the solar collector in June had the lowest cost per unit of useful exergy produced (70.17 $/GJ), the highest bonus due to saving carbon dioxide production (0.0193 $/h), and also the lowest amount of environmental impact per unit of useful exergy produced (17.56 mPts/GJ). Then, the sensitivity of energy and exergy efficiencies as well as the cost per unit of useful exergy produced and the environmental effect on the unit of useful exergy produced in relation to the climate changes (solar radiation intensity, ambient temperature, and wind speed); were investigated. The results of the sensitivity analysis show that increasing the intensity of solar radiation, decreasing the ambient temperature, and decreasing the wind speed can lead to improving the exergy, economic, and environmental performance of PTC. Also, the multi-objective genetic algorithm has been used to optimize PTC to improve the design parameters and operating conditions. The optimization results show that the exergy efficiency and the total cost of the optimized PTC (for January which had the maximum exergy efficiency) are 26.38% and 0.61 dollars per hour, respectively. It shows an improvement of 6.27% in exergy efficiency and 20.36% in total system cost.

Automated summary

In this research, the performance of a PTC for different months in Tehran was analyzed using Energy, exergy, exergoeconomic, and exergoenvironmental analyzes. Results showed that PTC had the highest energy efficiency in July and the highest exergy efficiency in January. The sensitivity analysis indicated that improving solar radiation intensity, decreasing ambient temperature, and wind speed can enhance the performance of PTC.