Search results for "thermoeconomic"
showing 10 items of 29 documents
Assessing the Robustness of Thermoeconomic Diagnosis of Fouled Evaporators: Sensitivity Analysis of the Exergetic Performance of Direct Expansion Coi…
2016
Thermoeconomic diagnosis of refrigeration systems is a pioneering approach to the diagnosis of malfunctions, which has been recently proven to achieve good performances for the detection of specific faults. Being an exergy-based diagnostic technique, its performance is influenced by the trends of exergy functions in the “design” and “abnormal” conditions. In this paper the sensitivity of performance of thermoeconomic diagnosis in detecting a fouled direct expansion coil and quantifying the additional consumption it induces is investigated; this fault is critical due to the simultaneous air cooling and dehumidification occurring in the coil, that induce variations in both the chemical and th…
SETUP OF VIRTUAL EXPERIMENTS AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CONVENTIONAL THERMOECONOMIC DIAGNOSIS OF MULTIPLE FAULTS IN AIR-CONDENSED ROOFTOP SYSTEMS
2012
The diagnosis of soft faults in vapor compression cooling systems is a crucial activity, since malfunctions may provoke heavy degradation in plant performance and increase the power consumption for space cooling. Among the various Faults Detection and Diagnosis techniques developed over the last two decades, thermoeconomic diagnosis has been playing only a marginal role due to the difficulties encountered when applying the conventional thermoeconomic approaches to vapor compression refrigeration plants. In this paper a critical analysis on capabilities and limits of thermoeconomic diagnosis of refrigeration systems is proposed. The reference plant assumed for this study is a 116 kWc air-con…
Application of advanced thermodynamics, thermoeconomics and exergy costing to a Multiple Effect Distillation plant: In-depth analysis of cost formati…
2015
Abstract The high thermal energy consumption per m3 fresh water is one of the main barriers to the spread of thermally driven desalination processes and has limited their use to applications in countries with high reserves of fossil fuels or to specific technological solutions like dual purpose cogeneration plants and solar desalination systems. Being energy conversion efficiency a major issue to improve the performance of thermally driven desalination plants, thermoeconomic analysis has been attracting the efforts of researchers for the identification of margins for process improvement. In this paper a rigorous exergy and thermoeconomic analysis is presented for an 8 effect forward feed Mu…
A new approach to exergoeconomic analysis and design of variable demand energy systems
2006
Exergoeconomics is an attractive research field regarding the optimisation of design and operability where complex energy systems are concerned. The different approaches to thermoeconomics can easily achieve optimal or near-optimal solutions for the design of energy systems in industrial applications, characterised by regular energy demand profiles; for applications in buildings, however, the great number of components operating at unsteady conditions due to the demand variability make these methodologies hard to use. Furthermore, in project phases of complex plants such as Combined Heat and Power (CHP) or Combined Heat Cooling and Power (CHCP), energy demand can be satisfied with different…
On thermoeconomics of energy systems at variable load conditions: integrated optimization of plant design and operation
2007
Abstract Thermoeconomics has been assuming a growing role among the disciplines oriented to the analysis of energy systems, its different methodologies allowing solution of problems in the fields of cost accounting, plant design optimisation and diagnostic of malfunctions. However, the thermoeconomic methodologies as such are particularly appropriate to analyse large industrial systems at steady or quasi-steady operation, but they can be hardly applied to small to medium scale units operating in unsteady conditions to cover a variable energy demand. In this paper, the fundamentals of thermoeconomics for systems operated at variable load are discussed, examining the cost formation process an…
Exergy analysis and thermoeconomic cost accounting of a Combined Heat and Power steam cycle integrated with a Multi Effect Distillation-Thermal Vapou…
2017
Abstract In this paper an exergy analysis and thermoeconomic cost accounting of a Combined Heat and Power steam cycle integrated with Multi Effect Distillation-Thermal Vapour Compression plant is performed; the goal of the study is to show how these methodologies provide a rational criterion to allocate production costs on electricity and freshwater in such a dual purpose system. After a brief overview on the methodology and a description of reference plant, exergy analysis is carried out to calculate exergy flows and exergy efficiencies at component level. A detailed description of the adopted thermoeconomic model is given. In a first scenario, cost accounting is performed assuming that th…
Advanced energetics of a Multiple-Effects-Evaporation (MEE) desalination plant. Part II: Potential of the cost formation process and prospects for en…
2010
This paper represents the 2nd part of a paper in two parts. In part I a 2nd Principle analysis of a Multiple- Effects-Evaporation (MEE) process has been proposed. In this Part II perspectives for process improvement will be investigated, along two distinct research lines: the thermoeconomics-aided optimization of a new system and the increase of thermal efficiency for existing systems by a pinch-based plant retrofit. As concerns the first research line, a detailed productive structure for the plant stage (i.e. effect) examined in Part I is presented; the cost formation structure is then used to improve a simplified optimization process, revealing capable to properly reflect the interactions…
Thermoeconomic Diagnosis of Air conditioning Systems: an Innovative Approach for Improved Reliability of the Technique
2018
Thermoeconomic diagnosis is an exergy-based fault detection and diagnosis technique which has been recently extended to air conditioning systems. One of the main features of this technique is to provide quantitative information of the impact of each fault on the increased energy consumption of a system. This information is then used for programming cost-effective maintenance strategies. Only few papers have focused on it and a lot of work is needed for further improvements. In this work, the approach was developed by means of experimental activities carried out on a 17.5 kW packaged rooftop air conditioning unit (RTU). The RTU was tested in psychrometric chambers under a wide range of opera…
Thermoeconomic Analysis Under Dynamic Operating Conditions for Space Heating and Cooling Systems in Small Residential Buildings
2018
Due to the social concern for energy savings and ecological improvement necessity in the performance of buildings, new analysis tools emerged. Thermoeconomics connects the physics and economics of energy conversion processes through the second law of thermodynamics. A limited number of thermoeconomic applications in buildings have been proposed, due to the difficulties in dealing with very irregular energy load profiles and unsteady plant operating conditions, which require the use of dynamic approaches that increase the complexity of the method. The present study highlights the potential of thermoeconomics as a support for decision making, due to the capability to identify trade-offs betwe…
A thermoeconomics-based approach to the integrated optimization of design and operation for decentralised energy systems and variable load conditions
2006
The many comprehensive approaches formulated for the optimization of large industrial energy systems have been rarely applied to small and medium scale units, because of the difficulties in handling a continuously variable energy demand and of the lower margins for energy and emissions saving. Today, the growing interest for decentralised energy systems in the civil sector stimulates major efforts for the optimization of such plants, with a particular focus on the control system and on a management strategy able to exploit the opportunities existing in the free energy market. In this paper a methodology is proposed for the optimization of design and operation of variable demand systems supp…