Optimization of a hybrid renewable energy system for power and hydrogen production

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shahrood University of Technology, Iran

2 Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Shahrood University of Technology, Shahrood, Iran

Abstract

In this research, a hybrid renewable system based on the use of solar and oceanic thermal energy to produce power and hydrogen by using a flat plate solar collector was investigated from a thermodynamic and economic point of view. The objective functions investigated in this research were exergy efficiency and cost rate. Collector mass flow rate, collector area, turbine inlet temperature, and solar radiation intensity were considered as four decision variables, and the effect of these parameters on system performance and system exergy loss was investigated. The optimization of objective functions was done by the Nelder-Mead method. From single-objective optimization, it was concluded that the best system exergy efficiency rate is 7.31% and the system cost rate is 27.48 $/hour in the optimal state. From the sensitivity analysis, it was concluded that increasing the parameters of the collector area, solar radiation intensity, and turbine inlet temperature had a positive effect on the system performance, and increasing the mass flow rate parameter of the solar collector had a negative effect on the system performance. Also, from the analysis of the exergy loss of the system, it was concluded that the increase in the intensity of solar radiation, the area of the collector, and the mass flow rate of the collector increase the overall exergy loss of the system, but the increase in the inlet temperature to the turbine decreases the exergy loss of the system.

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