Energetic, Economic and Environmental Performance Analysis of a Micro-Combined Cooling, Heating and Power (CCHP) System Based on Biomass Gasification

Abstract

In this paper, the performance of an innovative micro-combined cooling, heating, and power (CCHP) system, based on an internal combustion engine fueled with syngas from woody biomass, is analyzed. In particular, a numerical model, which considers a direct coupling between the internal combustion engine and the gasifier as a novel aspect, was developed, validated and applied to three different case studies to perform an energetic, economic and environmental analysis. For each considered case, the CCHP system was equipped with a reversible electric air–water pump and a back-up boiler. The energy analysis shows that the user characterized by a high uniformity of the thermal load exploits the CCHP system in the optimal way as it allows for the highest thermal self-consumption rate. On the contrary, for the cases in which the thermal request is not uniform, a high electric surplus is recorded. In this case, the adoption of the heat pump allows to compensate for this disadvantage by recovering the electric surplus, thus achieving a thermal integration and CO2 emissions reduction of about 15.8% with respect to the case in which no heat pump is used. Overall, the results demonstrate the affordability of the biomass-based CCHP system, which is of increasing importance in this period of contingent international political crisis.