Comprehensive Analysis of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) Combined Cycle Power Plant Integrated With Solar and Wind Energy Systems for Production of Electricity and Fresh Water

In the ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) system, electrical power is generated by exploiting the temperature difference between cold deep seawater and warm surface water. This study introduces an innovative method that uses a solar collector to increase the temperature of the water entering the evaporator and a wind turbine to increase the useful power, thereby increasing the energy efficiency and power output of the cycle. The research findings indicate that the proposed cycle achieves an average net production power of 36.63 megawatts, with energy productivity and exergy at 9.70% and 29.12%, respectively. Additionally, freshwater production has increased by 170.26% compared to the base cycle. A sensitivity analysis of various parameters was also conducted on the proposed cycle, which demonstrated a reduction of 89.69 tons in carbon dioxide emissions. Finally, to optimize the designed system, the response level multiobjective optimization method has been used to find the best set of objective functions and decision variables. The four objective functions of this optimization included exergy efficiency, total system energy, production work, and system cost rate.