Parametric analysis of a solar Organic Rankine Cycle trigeneration system for residential applications

In this paper, the potential of a small scale concentrated solar Organic Rankine Cycle unit coupled with an absorption chiller for trigeneration purposes is investigated using a simulation analysis. At the moment, only few research works encompass small-scale solar trigeneration systems and most of them do not refer to real plant. On the contrary, in this work electric, heating and cooling maximum generation of a real and experimental small scale prototype system composed of a 50 m2 CPC solar field, a 3.5 kWe ORC plant and a 17 kWc absorption chiller is investigated by means of TRNSYS. In particular, this work relies on the evaluation of the dynamic performance of the mentioned plant varying some selected system parameters to provide proper modifications of its design configuration and operation. More precisely, working temperature ranges, heating and intermediate fluid flow rates as well as volume of the storage tanks and size of the solar field have been varied within the simulation model. Results have shown that operating temperature ranges of the storage tanks considerably affect the overall performance of the system; by appropriately choosing these ranges the primary energy production can be increased by 6.5% compared to the baseline configuration without any additional investment costs. Moreover, setting suitably some design parameters can significantly contribute to extend the operating hours and the feasibility of a such small scale integrated system for residential applications.