Exergy based methods for economic and environmental design optimization of energy systems

Exergy based analyses are considered by the scientific community appropriate tools for the design and the performance evaluation and improvement of energy systems. Moreover, they are today recognized as proper instruments to assess economic, environmental and social externalities of energy systems. This paper presents the results of a study in which different exergy analysis methods are used to determine the optimal design configuration of the considered system. Authors propose the application of Exergoeconomic analysis combined with a Risk Analysis to a simplified gas turbine operating with Joule Brayton cycle. All these methods aims to determine the optimal design configurations of the system with respect to their objective cost functions, respectively: exergy efficiency, monetary cost and risk of the product. Results lead to three different optimal configuration parameters for the system, according to the objective of each analysis procedure.