Performance assessment of biomass–geothermal configuration energy resources for cooling and power generation

Abstract

The emission of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels is the main environmental impact of energy resources. Moving toward the use of renewable energy resources is the only solution to tackle these problems. In this paper, a configuration of the hybrid biomass and geothermal energy resource is examined for cooling and electricity generation. In this study, water as a geothermal working fluid is heated up due to combustion of syngas produced in a digester and produce power in a steam turbine. So, the remaining heat of this geofluid runs an absorption chiller for cooling production. The results reveal that the energy and exergy efficiencies of this proposed cycle are 30.8% and 15.5%, respectively. Moreover, the economic analysis of this cycle concludes that the payback period is 2.8 years and the simple payback period for this configuration is 2.6 years. Moreover, the highest exergy destruction rate of 52.4% belongs to the absorption refrigeration cycle. Whereas the lowest exergy destruction of the steam line is the lowest value of 17.4%.