Exergoeconomic and enviroeconomic analyses of a building heating system using SPECO and Lowex methods

•Applying the specific exergy costing and Lowex methods to a building heating system.•Belonging the maximum exergetic cost effectiveness to the generation step.•Obtaining the exergetic cost coefficients of the products for the system components.•Calculating the overall system exergy efficiency to be 3.46%.•Determining the yearly released CO2 amount for heating and domestic hot water.

This study deals with exergetic and exergoeconomic analyses of a building heating system, which is examined from the generation component to the envelope of the building. The energy and exergy flows between the components are calculated using the predesign tool for an optimized building design. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the specific exergy costing (SPECO) method is applied to a building along with a low-exergy (also referred to as Lowex) analysis for the first time. By adding the value from the generation to the emission components, the exergetic cost coefficients of the products are determined to be 174.67 $/GJ and 256.89 $/GJ, respectively. Exergetic cost effectiveness (ECE) parameter is used to decide about which components will be improved. The first two high values are found to be 0.469 and 0.0057 for the generation and the building envelope, respectively.