Integration of solar dryer with a hybrid system of gasifier-solid oxide fuel cell/micro gas turbine: energy, economy, and environmental analysis

A novel approach is presented to reduce the moisture content of biomass by employing a solar dryer. The impact of decreasing moisture contents on the key parameters of the system is investigated. Also, the effect of air mass flux on drying rate of biomass is evaluated and discussed considering three alternative air mass flux rates as well as two different time periods for drying and discharging biomass, namely 15 and 30 min. Results demonstrate that moisture reduction improves the output power and efficiency of the system from 265 kW and 30% up to 295 kW and 57.6%, respectively; in other words, employing solar dryer leads to an improvement of electrical efficiency up to 27.6%. The best efficiency performance of system is achieved by the 15 min drain time and air mass flux of 0.011 kgm⁻²s⁻¹, while the best power generation of the system will be obtained by the 30 min drain time and air mass flux of 0.011 kgm⁻²s⁻¹. Furthermore, the levelized cost of electricity analysis exhibits 0.39 $/kWh at the best performance of the system. The environmental analysis shows that the designed power plant has the potential to drop up to 721 tons of CO₂/year, which has yielded an environmental benefit of 17,304 $/year when compared to a coal-fired power plant of the same capacity.