Development and assessment of a hybrid solar system with gas turbine, organic Rankine cycle and thermal desalination

Hybrid systems can significantly reduce energy and water consumption for communities. This is the motivation of this research to design an innovative and cost-effective system without the emission of harmful pollutants with an emphasis on providing the vital outputs of heating, electricity and fresh water. The system consists of three main subsystems: a solar unit with a combustion chamber for heat production, a thermal desalination unit for fresh water production and an organic Rankine cycle for electricity production. In this tri-generation system, two input sources of the solar heliostat field and the combustion chamber are used to preheat the air as the working fluid of the gas turbine cycle. The heat is transferred by the evaporator with a preheater to the organic Rankine cycle. Finally, the excess heat in the organic Rankine cycle is transferred to the thermal desalination unit using a condenser. Thermodynamic analysis is performed on each of the system components and the feasibility of the system is investigated in comparison with other existing systems. Finally, the key findings show that the proposed innovative system is very useful for achieving a power generation rate of 14,439.32 kW. On the other hand, the exergy destruction rate for the central tower was calculated to be 2530.504 kW, which represents the highest rate.