Design and Thermodynamic Analysis of a Concentrated Solar–Thermal-Based Multigeneration System for a Sustainable Laundry Facility

Commercial laundries are great candidates to study, analyze, and redesign in terms of multigeneration, integration, and waste heat recovery. Large-scale laundry processes might seem simple yet are very energy intensive and highly inefficient in terms of energy management. Laundry processes rely on unsustainable energy sources such as diesel and a significant amount of waste heat is lost in the form of steam. This research aims to study the feasibility of transforming a commercial laundry facility located in Qatar into a renewable-energy-based multigeneration system and to analyze it through energy and exergy analysis. In this study, a CSP/T-based integrated energy system is developed and analyzed. The system is proposed to produce electric power, thermal energy, compressed air, cooling, and water. The system is integrated with compressed air energy storage and absorption cooling system for space cooling purposes. In addition, a parametric study is performed to investigate the effect of varying certain parameters such as atmospheric temperature, solar heat transfer fluid temperature, mass flow rate of heat transfer fluid, solar irradiance, space cooling temperature, organic Rankine cycle turbine pressure ratio, etc. on the performance of the proposed system. The designed system is capable of generating about 8 MW thermal energy at 800 W/m² solar irradiance. This thermal energy generated from the CSP/T subsystem is utilized for the required electricity production of about 1.3 MW via an organic Rankine cycle as well as required steam production of 0.1 kg/s. In addition, compressed air is produced and stored in a compressed air energy storage (CAES) unit, where the heat content of this compressed air is initially utilized to provide the necessary heat for the absorption cooling cycle to produce a space cooling load of about 210 kW.