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In this paper, thermodynamic and thermoeconomic analyses, and also optimization of an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) were performed. The system was adapted to an existing solid waste power plant with a 5.66 MW installed power capacity in order to produce additional power from the exhaust gas. The actual operating data of the plant were utilized during all stages of the analyses. The originality of this paper is based on the analysis of the possibility of the energy conversion of an exhaust gas with a temperature of 566 & #x000B0;C into the electricity by utilizing an ORC system in the concept of waste-to-energy. Four different working fluids: toluene, octamethyltrisiloxane (MDM), octamethyl cyclotetrasiloxane (D4) and n-decane were considered and analyzed for the current system. This is also another novelty of this study due to lack of such a study, in the open literature, that deals with an ORC utilized for a typical municipal solid waste power plant. According to the thermoeconomic analyses, toluene was found to be the optimum working fluid with the maximum power output of 584.6 kW and the exergy efficiency of 15.69%. The optimization of the cycle was performed by using the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm method (NSGA-II) in MATLAB software environment. The optimization results were compared and the deviations of the net power output and the total cost rate were evaluated as & #x2212;5.89%, & #x2212;3.51 & #x00024;/h for toluene; 0.96%, & #x2212;3.60 & #x00024;/h for MDM; 8.45%, & #x2212;2.04 & #x00024;/h for D4 and 2.00%, & #x2212;5.54 & #x00024;/h for n-decane, respectively. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd

In the present study, optimization of two parabolic trough solar thermal power plants integrated with thermal energy storage (TES), and fuel backup system (FBS) has been performed. The first plant uses Therminol VP-1 as heat transfer fluid in the solar field and the second plant uses molten salt. The optimization is carried out with solar multiple (SM) and full load hours of TES as the parameters, with an objective of minimizing the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and maximizing the annual energy yield. A 4E (energy-exergy-environment-economic) comparison of the optimized plants alongside the Andasol 1 as reference plant is studied. The molten salt plant resulting as the best technology, from the optimization and 4E comparative study has been chosen for the viability analysis of ten locations in Algeria with semi-arid and arid climatic conditions. The results indicate that Andasol 1 reference plant has the highest mean annual energy efficiency (17.25%) and exergy efficiency (23.30%). Whereas, the highest capacity factor (54.60%) and power generation (236.90 GW h) are exhibited by the molten salt plant. The molten salt plant has least annual water usage of about 800,482 m3, but demands more land for the operation. Nevertheless the oil plant emits the lowest amount of CO2 gas (less than 40.3 kilo tonnes). From the economic viewpoint, molten salt seems to be the best technology compared to other plants due to its lowest investment cost (less than 360 million dollars) and lower levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) (8.48 �/kW h). The viability study proposes Tamanrasset, as the best location for erection of a parabolic trough solar thermal power plant with a low LCOE of 7.55 �/kW h, and a high annual power generation (more than 266 GW h). According to the feasibility analysis, the semi-arid and arid Algerian sites are suitable for realization of PTSTPP with integrated TES and FBS, especially the southern locations (19 N-32 N, 8 W-12 E). � 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.