Thermoeconomic and environmental analyses of a low water consumption combined steam power plant and refrigeration chillers-Part 2: Thermoeconomic and environmental analysis

• Exergy and thermoeconomic analyses of the base and proposed systems were developed.
• Environmental analysis of the base and proposed combined system was conducted.
• Evaluating the environmental-economic value of water for the proposed system.
• Decreasing the total cost value of the cooling tower in the proposed system by 1.8%.
• Promoting the base system by reducing the exergy loss by 12% in the proposed system.

The present paper is the continuation of Part 1 of a comprehensive study on new low water consumption combined steam power plants (SPP) and refrigeration chillers. Environmental, exergy, and thermoeconomic analyses of the steam power plant with natural draft wet cooling tower (SPP-NDWCT) as the base system, combined vapor compression refrigeration and the base system (VCR-SPP-NDWCT), and combined absorption heat pump and the base system (ABHP-SPP-NDWCT) are developed. The exergy analysis is conducted to analyze and compare the systems from an exergetic point of view and the thermoeconomic analysis is done to obtain the unit cost of the water loss in the systems’ cooling towers. The environmental analysis is also carried out to obtain the annual environmental revenue of the saved water compared to the annual economic and environmental costs caused by consuming more fuel in the ABHP-SPP-NDWCT system. The results demonstrated that the NDWCT exergy loss, exergy destruction and total cost value decreased by 12%, 10.7% and 1.8% in ABHP-SPP-NDWCT system, respectively. Thus, the ABHP-SPP-NDWCT system could replace the conventional SPP-NDWCT system in regions where the environmental- economic value of water is higher than 1.081 $/l.

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