Performances Analysis of Combined Rankine and Absorption Refrigeration Cycles for a Small Size Solar Power Plant
Abstract
The use of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) systems for combined cooling and power (CCP) is increasing daily across the global. However, due to some land and other limitations various types of solar fields, CSP technology and specially solar trough Collector (STC) configuration which may have effect on overall performance of Solar thermal power plant (STPP) are used. Thus, performance analysis of these configurations is vital in order to identify their performance uncertainties and weakness. This paper studies and analysis the performance of three types of STC configuration used in most experimental and non conmmercial plants, using Matlab software and analytical approach. The results shows that for the same modules number, 5Loops configuration has higher performance with energy efficiency of 32.75%, exergy efficiency of 32.07% and lowest coefficient of performance for cooling of 0.5751, followed by 10-SCAs configuration, and 15-SCAs configuration has the lowest performance with energy efficiency of 26.45%, exergy efficiency of 25.91%, and highest coefficient of performance of cooling (COPc) of 0.7706. This study is important for identifying the performance uncertainties of various STC configurations using indirect stem generation (ISG) and selecting the most optimal configuration for small size plant in order to maximize the utilization of solar energy in CSP systems.