| Abstrakt: |
Summary: In this study, a geothermal energy‐based integrated gasification combined cycle is incorporated with an anaerobic digestion unit to produce multiple useful commodities to create a circular economy for a sustainable community. This proposed system aims to utilize non‐recyclable and unfavorable plastics, which leave material recovery facilities as a feedstock in the gasification unit to produce hydrogen, hydrogen sulfur, and electricity. Further energy is recovered in the heat recovery heat exchanger to meet the optimum temperature in the digesters where wastewater sludge is utilized to generate biogas and lower‐grade compost for agricultural applications. The Durham Region in the Province of Ontario is selected to be the case location to meet the increased energy demand as a result of the growing population. Two software packages, namely Aspen Plus and Engineering Equation Solver, are used to completing the thermodynamic simulations and analyses for this system. Some parametric studies are also carried out to investigate its feasibility under different conditions and find the optimum working conditions for the integrated gasification combined cycle. Accordingly, gasification operating temperature, steam feed rate, oxygen feed rate, and carbon content in biomass are varied in both the integrated gasification combined cycle and anaerobic digestion facilities. In the proposed system, hydrogen‐to‐fuel and biogas‐to‐biomass ratios are observed to be 0.192 and 0.57, respectively, while the daily total energy delivered to the community from this integrated system is calculated to be 2.7 GWh. The overall energy and exergy efficiencies of the proposed waste management system at the chosen operating conditions are determined to be 28.1% and 30.2%, respectively. As a result of the dynamic simulations where the steam rate is varied in the gasification reactor, the energy and exergy efficiencies are determined to be 33.7% and 36.2% at the steam rate of 10 kg/s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
