Thermoeconomic and exergoenvironmental assessments of a combined micro-gas turbine and superheated Kalina cycles for cogeneration of heat and electrical power using biomass

Because non-renewable is energy resource depletion and environmental pollution, researchers and governmental policymakers considered two options: (1) replacing the non-renewable energy resource with renewable ones and (2) improving the performance of non-renewable fueled systems by considering techniques such as combined heat and power by recovering the energy of exhaust hot gas for heating utilization. In this paper, the integration of biomass-fueled micro-gas turbine (MGT) with superheated Kalina cycle was evaluated by the energy, exergy, economic and exergoenvironmental (4E) analyses. The products of this system are electrical energy produced by the superheated Kalina cycle (SKC) and MGT, as well as heating energy recovered from the gasifier. Also, other biomass types are examined and the performance of the system is investigated by using them. From the energy and exergy point of view, integration of the SKC to MGT biomass-fueled improves the system energy and exergy efficiency from 30.7% and 26.1% to 51.7% and 50.8%, respectively. In this system, the highest and lowest percentage of exergy destruction rate is related to the SKC and gasifier. The economic analysis shows this integration is beneficial and it reduces the system payback period (PP) from 9.07 to 4.6 years. The parametric study shows that increasing the air content in the gasifier improves the system performance while increasing the water content decreases it.

Automated summary

This paper evaluates the integration of biomass-fueled micro-gas turbine (MGT) with superheated Kalina cycle through energy, exergy, economic, and exergoenvironmental analyses. The research finds that this integration improves the system's energy and exergy efficiency, and is economically beneficial.