Exergoeconomic optimization and environmental analysis of a novel solar-trigeneration system for heating, cooling and power production purpose

• We apply exergoeconomic optimization for an integrated solar trigeneration plant.
• An example of decision-making for finding a final optimal solution is introduced.
• Optimization process increase the exergy efficiency from 44.38% to 57.34% and 56.07%.
• Optimization algorithm decreases the unit cost and CO2 emission cost of the system.
• Comprehensive sensitivity analysis performs on the unit cost of trigeneration plant.

In the present article attempt is made to develop an exergoeconomic optimization model to integrate solar energy into trigeneration system producing electricity, heating and cooling according to the exergetic, economic and environmental targets. The results show that by selecting final optimum solution for the trigeneration system, the unit cost of products reduced by 11.5% and exergy efficiency increased from 44.38% in the base case to 56.07% in the optimum case. The application of optimization process shows that exergoeconomic analysis improved significantly the total performance of the trigeneration system in a way that fuel cost, exergy destruction cost and environmental impacts (CO2 emissions cost) are reduced by 24.17%, 38.87% and 24.17%. Finally, sensitivity analysis is carried out to examine the effect of changes in the trigeneration Pareto optimal solutions and the unit cost of products to the important economic parameters, such as interest rate, fuel cost, system operation period, and construction period.