Optimal 4E evaluation of an innovative solar-wind cogeneration system for sustainable power and fresh water production based on integration of microbial desalination cell, humidification- dehumidification, and reverse osmosis desalination

Reliable freshwater production is vital for tackling two of the most critical challenges the world is facing today: climate change and sustainable development. Present work presents an innovative cogeneration system based on solar and wind energies for sustainable production of freshwater, power, and wastewater treatment. For freshwater production and wastewater treatment in this system, the integration of a microbial desalination cell with a humidification-dehumidification and reverse osmosis desalinations has been used. The mentioned systems provide their heat demand from solar energy, and when solar radiation is unable to provide this heat, a hydrogen internal combustion engine drive produces the required heat for the freshwater plant. Excess heat from the hydrogen internal combustion engine is fed into the organic Rankine cycle for more power generation in the whole system to reduce system waste heat and increase efficiency. PEM electrolyzer has been used to supply the hydrogen needed by the internal combustion engine, and this system uses wind turbines to supply the power demand. To evaluate the performance of the whole system, energy, exergy, exergeoeconomic, and exergoenvironmental (4E) analyses have been carried out. Finally, to improve the performance parameters of the system, multi-objective optimization using the Salp swarm algorithm has been used. Investigation of the results show that the proposed system can produce 720 kW of electricity and 5.36 m3/h of freshwater. The energy efficiency of the system is 22.09 %, and its overall cost rate and overall environmental impact rate are 540.33 $/hr and 17.37 Pt/h, respectively. Among the qualitative results obtained in this research, it is possible to mention the high exergy destruction, cost destruction, and environmental impact destruction of the internal combustion engine compared to other equipment used in the proposed system, and this point shows the need to improve this equipment, similar to previous researches. The five-objective optimization results of the proposed system showed that the performance parameters of the system, such as polygeneration energy efficiency, total cost rate, and total environmental impact rate, can be improved by 6.2 %, 1.44 %, and 0.52 %, respectively. The payback period of the proposed system in the optimal state is 6.95 years.