Synthesis of integrated absorption refrigeration systems involving economic and environmental objectives and quantifying social benefits

This paper presents a new methodology for energy integration of systems that require absorption refrigeration. It allows heat exchange among process hot and cold streams and the integration of excess process heat as well as external utilities provided by solar energy, fossil fuels and biofuels. An optimization formulation is developed to address the multiple objectives of simultaneously minimizing the total annualized cost and the greenhouse gas emissions while the social impact is measured by the number of jobs generated by the project in the entire life cycle. The economic function accounts for the tax credit obtained by the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions when cleaner technologies are used. The proposed model also considers the optimal selection of different types of solar collectors and the optimal time-based usage of solar energy, fossil fuel, and biofuel. Two example problems are presented to show the applicability of the proposed methodology. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.