Simulation of Emerging Smaller-Scale Tri-Generation Systems

Support for renewable energy and for actions aiming at increasing energy efficiency represents a fundamental objective for both governments and private investors. Depletion of energy resources and global pollution effects, produced by the exploitation of non-renewable energy sources, represent major concerns for the social and environmental sustainability of energy production in the immediate future. This concern is compounded by steady increase of the global energy consumption, despite of the limited availability of non-renewable fuel resources. As the energy demand and the pollution concerns continue to grow, the research on energy efficiency and the need to design new environmental friendly power generation is becoming more crucial than ever. This study is aimed to analyze the energy needs of a health care facility in order to define a strategy to improve the efficiency of the energy supply. Using eQuest software, the facility is simulated and electricity and natural gas consumption is evaluated assuming the direct purchase of both from external grids. The analysis continues by adding cogeneration. To adequately simulate the behavior of this kind of plant, a detailed study of gas turbines has been carried out to produce an up-to- date model of this component. Different layouts, including different sizes of gas turbines, are simulated in order to identify the best plant layout. The next step of this study focuses on trigeneration. Once again, preliminary task was to develop a detailed study of its components. In this phase, the object of analysis is the absorption chiller. Using eQuest the cogeneration layout of the facility is further improved through the installation of the absorption chiller, to exploit the thermal energy content of the gas turbine exhaust gas during the cooling season. Several simulations have been performed to define the layout of the plant that ensures the best performance. The simulation results allow two kinds of analysis; first, an economic analysis for defining the most profitable layout and second an analysis on source energy consumption to determine the layout providing the best exploitation of resources.