Energetic, exergetic, economic and environmental performance of a rice husk gasification based carbon negative combined power and cooling plant

This article presents the proposed configuration of a biomass gasification based carbon-negative combined power and cooling system. Parametric alteration of the response variables with respect to the individual input variables as well as the interaction of the input variables on response have been studied. Detailed analysis of variance has been carried out for the response variables (exergy utilization factor and modified unit electricity cost) and optimization of the whole plant has been performed employing response surface methodology. At the optimum operating condition, for both power and cooling, the plant utilizes 32.39 % of input exergy at an effective electricity cost of 0.1186 $/kWh (including the cost of CO₂ capture), having a desirability of about 1. CO₂ capture and the environmental benefit due to CO₂ cutting at optimum operating condition found to be 1.517 M ton/yr and 0.2275 B$/yr respectively.