A Co-Powered Biomass and Concentrated Solar Power Rankine Cycle Concept for Small Size Combined Heat and Power Generation

The present work investigates the matching of an advanced small scale Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Rankine cycle plant with end-user thermal and electric load. The power plant consists of a concentrated solar power field co-powered by a biomass furnace to produce steam in a Rankine cycle, with a CHP configuration. A hotel was selected as the end user due to its high thermal to electric consumption ratio. The power plant design and its operation were modelled and investigated by adopting transient simulations with an hourly distribution. The study of the load matching of the proposed renewable power technology and the final user has been carried out by comparing two different load tracking scenarios, <i>i.e.</i>, the thermal and the electric demands. As a result, the power output follows fairly well the given load curves, supplying, on a selected winter day, about 50 GJ/d of thermal energy and the 6 GJ/d of electric energy, with reduced energy dumps when matching the load.