Thermally driven cooling coupled with municipal solid waste-fired power plant: Application of combined heat, cooling and power in tropical urban areas

Energy recovery from flue gases in thermal treatment plants is an integral part of municipal solid waste (MSW) management for many industrialized nations. Often cogeneration can be employed for both enhancing the plant profitability and increasing the overall energy yield. However, it is normally difficult to justify traditional cogeneration in tropical locations since there is little need for the heat produced. The main objective of this article is to investigate the opportunities and potentials for various types of absorption technologies driven by MSW power plants for providing both electricity and cooling. Results show that cogeneration coupling with thermally driven cooling is sustainably and economically attractive for both electricity and cooling production. The thermally driven cooling provides significant potential to replace electrically driven cooling: such systems are capable of providing cooling output and simultaneously increasing electricity yield (41%). The systems are also capable of reducing the fuel consumption per unit of cooling in comparison with conventional cooling technology: a reduction of more than 1 MWfuel/MWcooling can be met in a small unit. MSW power plant coupled with thermally driven cooling can further reduce CO2 emissions per unit of cooling of around 60% as compared to conventional compression chiller and has short payback period (less than 5 years).