Abstract
The main objective of this study is to propose and design a novel modification process of a combined cooling, heating, and power production setup using parabolic trough solar collectors, contributing a higher performance. The base setup consists of a solar subsystem, an organic Rankine cycle for electricity generation, a heat exchanger and a single-effect absorption chiller that produce heating and cooling utilizing the organic Rankine cycle waste heat. The base setup is modified by adding two regenerative organic Rankine cycles, three heating process heat exchangers, and a double-effect absorption chiller. Both systems are studied and compared in three different modes, embracing solar mode (low radiation), solar and storage mode (high radiation), and storage mode (no radiation). Compared to the base setup, for the modified system, electricity production improves by 10.4%, 18.4% and 3.0% in the aforementioned operational modes, respectively. Also, for these modes, the electrical efficiency of the modified system is found to be 1.4 percent-point, 0.9 percent-point, and 0.3 percent-point higher than those of the base one, correspondingly. Eventually, a multi-objective optimization is conducted to optimize the modified system using a genetic algorithm.