Development of an integrated renewable energy system for multigeneration

In this paper, we propose a new integrated, solar and geothermal energy based system for multi-generation applications, which comprises two ORC (organic Rankine cycles) for power generation, an absorption chiller cycle for cooling production and a drying system to dry wet products. In addition, some useful heat is recovered from the condensers of the ORC for heating applications. In order to determine the irreversibilities, almost all the system components are examined energetically and exergetically. The overall energy and exergy efficiencies of the system are found to be 54.7% and 76.4%, respectively. Moreover, to analyze the system efficiently, parametric studies are also performed to observe the effects of different substantial parameters namely inlet pressure and temperature of the ORC turbine, and reference environment temperature in order to investigate the variations in the system performance in terms of the energy and exergy efficiencies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.