Optimal Solar Field and Thermal Storage Sizing in Hybrid Solar Biomass Cogeneration Plant

摘要

This paper attempts to find, through simulation, optimum size of solar field and thermal storage for a hybrid solar-biomass cogeneration plant. The approach is to couple thermal storage to steam generating heat exchanger to enable alternate operation of solar and biomass plant. For augmenting the intermittent solar power a control strategy that module flow along with standby auxiliary heater is implemented. To this end, the cogeneration plant is modeled using the simulation and computing program TRNSYS and MATLAB. Furthermore, the overall thermal efficiency of the saturated steam generation cycle is linked to the optimization program GenOpt. The simulation calculates the optimum solar field and thermal storage size, which yields maximum overall thermal efficiency. This article demonstrates the results of a case study directed at realizing feasible alternative energy solution for Ethiopian industry.