Combined microgrid power production and carbon dioxide capture by waste heat cascade utilization of the solar driven Organic Rankine cycle

Abstract This paper proposes to utilize the waste heat of a solar-driven Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) to support the regeneration process of the carbon capture by adsorption (CCA) subsystem. The waste heat is utilized in cascaded form, where the higher temperature component is supplied to the CCA device, and the lower temperature component is internally exchanged to increase the ORC efficiency. The proposed system is studied for the microgrid application, where a thermodynamic analysis is conducted to evaluate the electrical and exergy performance of the proposed system under 1 day of solar irradiance. The analysis is achieved by coupling the simulation models of each subsystem, where the influences of the ORC pressure ratio, turbine inlet temperature, regeneration temperature, and the CO2 input source are investigated. Results show that the proposed system is optimal when combined with CO2 capture of the animal farm; When a 50 m2 and 100 solar concentrations solar thermal plant is used, an optimal regeneration temperature of 75 °C existed to yield 4375.6 kg of CO2 per day and 0.3 MW electricity. The corresponding ORC and C O 2 capture exergy efficiencies are 0.25 and 0.012, respectively, which sum to be higher than the basic solar-ORC under the same conditions.