Design and thermodynamic analysis of an integrated concentrated solar and wind power system for multigeneration

This study analyzes a renewable energy-driven innovative multigeneration system, in which wind and concentrated solar energy are utilized in an efficient way to generate several commodities such as hydrogen, oxygen, desalted water, space cooling and space heating along with electricity. The system units are Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), Concentrated Photovoltaics (CPV), Wind Turbines for Wind-to-Electricity Conversion and Wind-to-Thermal Energy Conversion (WTEC), thermal energy storage, hydrogen and oxygen production, reheat Rankine Cycle, thermal desalination, absorption cooling and space heating. A heliostat field is considered to concentrate the solar light onto a spectrum splitter, where the light spectrum is separated into two portions as reflected and transmitted to be used as an energy source in the CSP and CPV units, respectively. The energetic and exergetic performances of the overall system as well as the system units are calculated based on the first and second laws of thermodynamics using Engineering Equation Solver (EES) software. The major portion of the input energy is converted to electricity while the required thermal energy for desalination and absorption cooling is obtained from condenser heat from the Rankine Cycle. A specific portion of the desalted water is used to feed Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) for hydrogen production. For maintaining higher efficiency of CPV operation, the heat generated on photovoltaic cells is removed to be utilized for supplying thermal energy at 80 ⁰C to the PEM and space heating units. Thermal energy storage units are also used for eliminating energy fluctuations in the system and for a continuous operation by storing the energy for the time when energy from sun or wind are not available. In brief, generation of multiple commodities is made possible on a continuous-based clean operation by an innovative integration of concentrated solar energy and wind energy systems. After performing thermodynamic analysis over the system, the overall energy and exergy efficiencies are found as 58.5% and 46.0%, respectively.