Thermodynamic analysis of a combined cooling, heating and power system based on solar thermal biomass gasification

The objectives of this paper are to propose a novel combined cooling heating and power (CCHP) system based on solar thermal biomass gasification, and to present thermodynamic analyses to effectively improve the utilization of distributed renewable energy sources. By adopting the Engineering Equation Solver software, the thermodynamic models of components were constructed, and the simulation procedures, mainly including the heat transfer of the solar cavity receiver and the biomass gasification, were presented. Based on a 100 kW electricity capacity, the design parameters of the CCHP system were obtained to simulate and discuss the thermodynamic performances and the energy and exergy flow diagrams in the cooling and heating operation modes. The influences of the key variable parameters, including the electric load ratio and the solar direct normal irradiance in the off-design work conditions on the thermodynamic performances, were analyzed and discussed. The simulation results indicate that the CCHP system achieves average energy and exergy efficiencies of 56% and 28%, respectively, and the energy ratio of solar to biomass is approximately 0.19 in the full load operating mode. Compared to the conventional biomass gasification CCHP system without solar energy, the increasing ratio of heating value of product gas based on the solar thermal biomass gasification reaches 55.09%, and the biomass saving ratios are approximately 9.22% and 2.02% in the cooling and heating modes respectively, which indicate that the proposed hybrid system is an effective and feasible method to improve the utilization efficiency of biomass energy.