Performance Investigation of Organic Rankine Cycle-or Photovoltaic-Solar Assisted Heat Pump Based Micro-Trigeneration System for Canadian Climatic Applications

Due to substantial amounts of energy required for heating and cooling (>80%) in residential areas of many countries, there is now demand for higher efficiency in energy systems for heating, cooling, and power generation. This paper presents a particularly important integration of an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) system in a parallel arrangement with a solar-assisted heat pump (SAHP). A dynamic simulation model has been developed in TRNSYS program to simulate performance of the micro-trigeneration system for cooling, heating and power generation. The feasibility of this combined system as well as its comparison with a photovoltaic (PV) system in parallel with an SAHP with flat-plate collectors are investigated for use in residential applications in Ottawa, Canada. Simulation results indicate that both systems are feasible solutions for trigeneration applications. In particular, the proposed ORC-SAHP system can effectively replace the PV counterpart system in terms of power generation performance, demonstrating that the addition of an ORC to an SAHP to provide heating, cooling and power has definite advantages that could be harnessed by the end-user.