Exergoeconomic and environmental analysis of a novel configuration of solar-biomass hybrid power generation system

In recent years, with increasing the industrial centers and indulgence in consumption of fossil fuels, the troublesome greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and depletion of fossil reservoir has become more prominent. One of the solutions to overcome this problem is utilization of renewable energy resources to generate power and electricity. Hence, a hybrid cycle consisted of biomass/solar is proposed in this paper. The proposed cycle is primarily postulated upon power production via the biomass energy where solar and steam turbine sections are incorporated to increase power output and decrease the CO2 emission. First, the cycle undergoes through a comprehensive energy, exergy, exergoeconomic, and environmental analysis and the impact of produced power, production cost, and the amount of CO2 emission of each mentioned sections on the overall produced power, the total cost, and the entire CO2 emission of the hybrid cycle is discussed and evaluated. In the end, through a parametric assessment, the effect of important thermodynamic parameters on the overall cycle performance is studied. The results indicated that by adding the solar unit to biomass section, the power is increased by 30% and CO2 emission has decreased by 22%. The capital cost of biomass and steam turbine units compared to the entire cycle are nearly equal as much as 15%, whereas for solar unit the amount of these costs compared to entire cycle is obtained as 71%.