Converting municipal waste into energy through the Waste-to-Energy (WtE) technology has been growing fast during the past decades. Besides the considerable reduction in the waste volume, it can generate steam and/or electricity. In the present work, energy, exergy, and exergoeconomic analysis techniques are used to investigate the performance of Tehran's 3 MW WtE plant. In the exergoeconomic analysis, the exergy cost of the stream, annual capital investment, and operating and maintenance costs are analyzed. Combination of economic principle and exergy analysis has been used to minimize the power generation costs. MSW is converted to a high enthalpy syngas via gasification to produce the required heat for steam generation in a Rankine power cycle. The effect of different inlet parameters is investigated on the target variables: net produced work, exergy efficiency, and power cost rate. Also, the exergy destruction and the exergetic efficiency of every component is calculated to assess the irreversibilities in the system. Results show that the gasifier has the highest exergy destruction. The overall exergy and energy efficiencies are 14.49% and 17.27%, respectively. Additionally, by increasing the turbine inlet pressure, the power cost rate will decrease and the net produced work and the overall system efficiency increases. It is further realized that the moisture content and gasification temperature have an indirect effect on the exergy efficiency of the gasifier. Keywords: gasification; waste to energy; exergoeconomic; thermodynamic analysis; exergy. INTRODUCTIONCurrent trends in the World's energy consumption caused considerable reduction in fossil fuel reserves. Consequent gradual increase in their prices beside the issues related to the emissions from their combustion and GHG effects obliged the societies to move toward renewable resources. Energy recovery from municipal solid waste (MSW) is identified by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as one of the renewable energy resources (Cheng and Hu, 2010). Since 2010 the landfill of flammable solid waste is banned in the EU countries, while the other recycling/recovery approaches are promoted, among them is the WtE technology (Ioana, 2010). Combustion, gasification, and pyrolysis are the conventional processes for thermochemical conversion of waste/biomass (Gholamian et al., 2016). Analysis of a 1 MW gasification plant indicated that the temperature of the gasifier and the excess air ratio are parameters that strongly affect the syngas composition and the gasifier efficiency (Wu et al., 2003). In a later study, Soltani et al. analyzed the performance of a 1 MW power plant of an externally fired gas turbine with biomass gasification and Rankine cycle (Soltani et al., 2013). In a biomass integrated gasification combined cycle plant, Bhattacharya et al. (Bhattacharya et al., 2011) investigated the energy and exergy analysis and the effect of main process parameters. They reported that combustion chamber has the maximum exergetic efficiency, the ther...
Total global renewable energy capacity has been increasing worldwide, i.e. doubled from 2007 to 2016. The main disadvantage of most renewable energy based plants is the lack of reliability for constant electricity production. Solar chimney is a renewable based plant with a power production of near zero during the night times. In this study, we have proposed a renewable integrated cycle by combining two plants and thereafter produce a reliable amount of electricity all the time. The proposed combination is achieved by injecting outlet air from the condensers of Tehran’s waste to energy plant into the bottom of the chimney tower, just below the turbine. Tehran’s average climate data for 12 months of the year is initially obtained and the Manzanares prototype is used for the solar chimney power plant model. The solar chimney power plant is simulated with 3D CFD simulation. The final power output of the solar chimney power plant reaches 20–70 kW and increased 20%–1200%, compared to the case without injection. This means power output of solar chimney power plant is at least 20 kW in the hottest night of the year with 5% relative humidity. We have concluded that by combining these renewable based plants, one of the most important solar chimney disadvantages could be removed.
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