Energy, exergy and environmental analysis of a hybrid combined cooling heating and power system integrated with compound parabolic concentrated-photovoltaic thermal solar collectors

Highlights: • Propose a novel CCHP system integrated with CPC-PVT solar collectors. • Define the levelized primary energy saving ratio of the hybrid system. • Analyze the thermodynamic performances on the design and off-design operation conditions. • Discuss the performances and contributions of CPC-PVT solar collectors. -- Abstract: The objective of this paper is to propose and analyze the performance of a novel hybrid combined cooling heating and power (CCHP) system coupled with compound parabolic concentrator-photovoltaic thermal (CPC-PVT) collectors. The electricity and hot water from CPC-PVT are integrated with the electricity and waste heat carried by exhaust gas and jacket water from the internal combustion engine to improve the energy performance. The thermodynamic models were constructed and validated by comparing the simulation results to those from existing studies. The thermodynamic performances were analyzed and the impacts of key parameters on the performances were discussed at the off-design condition. The levelized primary energy saving ratio (PESR) and carbon dioxide emission reduction ratio (CDERR) of the hybrid CCHP system in comparison to the CCHP system without solar energy were employed to evaluate the contribution of solar energy. The results indicated that the energy and exergy efficiencies at the design condition are 63.3% and 21.8% in summer, respectively, and 61.8% and 27.1% in winter, respectively. Compared to the CCHP system without solar energy, the hybrid system has more flexible ability to adjust the heating to electricity ratio and achieves the maximum levelized PESR of 28.6% and CDERR of 36.7%, respectively.