Future global cooling demand is expected to significantly increase, due to the heat island effect and the higher requirements about thermal well-being. Currently, deep geothermal energy resources are utilized in various countries for combined heat and power generation (CHP). Extending these plant concepts by an absorption chiller provides a promising environmentally friendly alternative to electricity-intensive vapour compression cooling cycles. Thus, efficient and flexible geothermal trigeneration systems that can provide cooling, heating and power generation by an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) will be of high interest in the future. However, most of the existing studies consider only rather simple ORC models and neglect the part load behaviour and the optimal integration of different potential absorption chiller types.This paper evaluates the performance of several different trigeneration plant configurations regarding part load behaviour and the optimal integration of various LiBr-H2O absorption chiller types. Next to the standard base system, a double lift and a double effect chiller are considered. Geothermal heat source conditions of 130 ◦C and a mass flow rate of 130 kg/s are assumed. This work investigates four potential trigeneration plant configurations. Two serial concepts (with different positions of the absorption chiller), one parallel concept and one serial-parallel concept. The results point out that for most configurations, both the choice of chiller type and its desorber temperature have a considerable influence on the achieved performance. The highest annual net power output is obtained by a serial configuration with a double lift absorption chiller on the third position and a desorber temperature of 45 ◦C. The integration of a double lift chiller increases the net power output of this serial configurations, while the serial-parallel and parallel configurations display the highest net power output with the standard absorption chiller.     «

Future global cooling demand is expected to significantly increase, due to the heat island effect and the higher requirements about thermal well-being. Currently, deep geothermal energy resources are utilized in various countries for combined heat and power generation (CHP). Extending these plant concepts by an absorption chiller provides a promising environmentally friendly alternative to electricity-intensive vapour compression cooling cycles. Thus, efficient and flexible geothermal trigen...     »