ADVANCED EXERGOECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF A REFRIGERATION MACHINE: PART 1. METHODOLOGY AND FIRST EVALUATION

An exergoeconomic analysis identifies the location, magnitude and sources of thermodynamic inefficiencies and costs in an energy conversion system. This information is used for improving the thermodynamic and the economic performance and for comparing various systems. A conventional exergy-based analysis does not consider the interactions among the components of a system nor the real potential for improving the system. These shortcomings can be addressed and the quality of the conclusions obtained from an exergoeconomic evaluation is improved, when for each important system component the values of exergy destruction and costs are split into endogenous/exogenous and avoidable/unavoidable parts. We call the analyses resulting from such splittings advanced exergy-based analyses. The paper demonstrates how an advanced exergoeconomic analysis provides the user with information on the formation processes of thermodynamic inefficiencies and costs and with suggestions for their minimization. In the first part of the paper, the advanced exergy-based analyses are applied to an air refrigeration machine. In the second part of the paper, we demonstrate that the information obtained in the first part can be used to modify the values of the decision variables to reduce the cost of the final product (cold) of the overall system.