Comparison of Integrated Polygeneration with evaporator with multiple feeds of a desalination unit. Exergetic, exergoeconomic and exergoenvironmental results
Exergy, desalination unit, exergoeconomics, exergoenvironmental, gas turbine
The distribution of drinking water is one of the most problems social of humanity, mainly due to scarcity of fresh water in some regions of the world. Hence, desalination has gained more significance, because it is an attractive solution owing to the large volume of seawater. In recent years, technological advances in cogeneration have provided significant improvements in thermal desalination. Nevertheless, the production of desalinated water still has a high operating cost for most countries. Thus, increasing the efficiency of the system components and reducing the costs associated with each one of them become fundamental parts for the improvement of the process. Therefore, this work presents the modeling and evaluation of a 30kW gas microturbine power plant integrated into a multiple-effect distillation unit with thermal vapor compression (MED-TVC). The energetic, exergetic, exergoeconomic and exergoenvironmental analyses of the plant were developed by the SPECO method. The plant has presented a daily production of 29.69 of desalinated water for 0.04033 kg/s of motive steam, resulting in 8.52 GOR. In addition, the exergetic efficiency increased from 13.84% to 23.39% with the use of cogeneration. Finally, the exergy destroyed in the desalination unit represented only 18% of the total, showing a high potential for exergy use of desalination in this system