Performance evaluation of absorption cooling system for air conditioning-based novel trigeneration system using solar energy

This work aims to exploit the waste heat from a basic helium Brayton cycle (HBC) driven by a solar power tower (SPT). The two subsystem heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) and vapour absorption cooling system (VACS) have been implemented to recover the waste heat, respectively, for heating to generate steam and cooling for air conditioning. A comprehensive exergy and energy analysis of this proposed trigeneration system was carried out with parametric analysis. For analysis purpose Engineering Equation Solver software has been used. It was concluded that energy and exergy efficiency and net work output of the proposed trigeneration system were observed as 44.96%, 34.15%, 14,562 kW, respectively. The heating production through the HRSG was obtained 8510 kW while the cooling production by VACS as 115.10 kW. Moreover, coefficient of performance (COP) of the VACS subsystem was observed as 0.8015. Energy and exergy efficiency of the SPT operated basic HBC using the subsystems was improved by 58.98% and 12.92%, respectively. Parametric analysis revealed that the helium turbine inlet temperature and solar heliostat field efficiency much affected the trigeneration system performance.