Assessment of power and hydrogen production performance of an integrated system based on middle-grade geothermal source and solar energy

In this study, power and hydrogen production performance of an integrated system is investigated. The system consists of an organic Rankine cycle (ORC), parabolic trough solar collectors (PTSCs) having a surface area of 545 m², middle-grade geothermal source (MGGS), cooling tower and proton exchange membrane (PEM). The final product of this system is hydrogen that produced via PEM. For this purpose, the fluid temperature of the geothermal source is upgraded by the solar collectors to drive the ORC. To improve the electricity generation efficiency, four working fluids namely n-butane, n-pentane, n-hexane, and cyclohexane are tried in the ORC. The mass flow rate of each working fluid is set as 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 kg/s and calculations are made for 16 different situations (four types of working fluids and four different mass flow rates for each). As a result, n-butane with a mass flow rate of 0.4 kg/s is found to be the best option. The average electricity generation is 66.02 kW between the hours of 11⁰⁰-13⁰⁰. The total hydrogen production is 9807.1 g for a day. The energy and exergy efficiency is calculated to be 5.85% and 8.27%, respectively.