Investigation of an ammonia-water combined power and cooling system driven by the jacket water and exhaust gas heat of an internal combustion engine

An ammonia-water combined power and cooling system is proposed and investigated in this work, in which the waste heat contained in the jacket water and exhaust gas of an internal combustion engine can be recovered efficiently to generate power and cooling energy simultaneously. The proposed system was simulated, and its thermodynamic performance in the base case was calculated based on waste heat data from an actual gas engine with a rated power output of 300 kW. The equivalent heat-to-power efficiency of the combined system is 19.76%, and the total equivalent power output is as high as 92.86 kW. The exergy efficiency of the combined system reaches 33.69%. The effects of the turbine inlet pressure, generation pressure in the reboiler, exhaust gas temperature and cooling water temperature were studied to provide guidance for the system design. The results of an economic analysis indicate that the proposed system has good economic benefit.