Energy-saving and economic feasibility of a battery-integrated combined cooling, heating and power (CCHP) plant through waste heat recovery for H2O-NH3 based absorption, power and cooling (APC) system

In this work the energy-saving potential and economic feasibility of a new trigeneration plant for a Hospital's facility was explored. The study focused on the integration of an ammonia-water absorption, power and cooling (APC) system inside a battery-integrated natural gas internal combustion engines (ICEs) based-CHP plant to constitute a highly flexible combined cooling, heating, and power plant (CCHP-BESS). Through onsite measurements the energy demand profile of the Oncological Reference Center Hospital (CROB), located in Italy, was obtained, then integrated with the mathematical models of the individual subsystems, tuned with experimental data. A proper control strategy was employed to maximize the efficiency of the plant, prioritizing the cooling or electric power production as a function of the Hospital's hourly demand. Results indicate the proposed CCHPBESS configuration reaches a fossil primary energy saving of 19.88 % and an additional 23.99 % reduction in CO2 emissions compared to the CROB'S separate production of the same amount of energy. Despite a relatively high investment cost of the proposed plant, mostly attributed to the experimental nature of the ammonia-based turbine of the APC subsystem, the economic assessment shows a 3.3 years for the simple-pay back (SPB) period.