Energy, exergy and sustainability assessments of a cogeneration system for ceramic industry

In this study, energy, exergy and sustainability analyses are applied in the ceramic sector to simulate gas turbine based cogeneration plant model. The cogeneration system mainly consists of a proposed gas turbine unit, a wall tile dryer and a ground tile dryer. The energy analysis is performed, and then the exergy and sustainability analyses are applied for the five different dead state (environment) temperatures varying from 10 °C to 30 °C (interval of 5 °C). It is found that the most energy efficient components are determined as the air compressor and combustion chamber, while the minimum one is obtained to be wall tile dryer (7.98%). The maximum sustainability and exergy efficiency (89.46%) are determined for the air compressor as at 10 °C dead state temperature. The cogeneration (overall) system has 17.51% energy efficiency; while its maximum exergy efficiency is found to be 29.98% at 30 °C environment temperature. The sustainabilities of the components are also directly proportional to their exergy efficiencies. Furthermore, the utilization of the gas turbine unit included cogeneration system can provide 0.1115 m3/s and 0.0732 m3/s natural gas saving for the ground and wall tile dryers, respectively.