District heating based on exhaust gas produced from end-of-life tires in Erzincan: Thermoeconomic analysis and optimization

This paper presents the thermoeconomic analysis and optimization of the Erzincan Waste Tire Recycling and Power Plant (EWTRPP) in Turkey and its waste heat-based district heating (DH) system. A thermoeconomical method, namely the specific exergy costing (SPECO), is applied to allocate cost flows through subcomponents of an actual existing plant. Besides, the obtained thermoeconomic results are improved by using an optimization method, namely non-dominant sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II), considering the temperature of the exhaust gas discharged to the atmosphere (T25), the thermal conductivity value of the insulation material (ki) and pipe roughness value (s). The energy and exergy efficiencies of the existing plant are found to be 27.37% and 35.57%, respectively, considering the data of the actual plant. Moreover, the energy and exergy efficiencies of the waste heat-based DH system are found to be 43.08% and 55.99%, respectively. The total cost rate of the overall system is deduced 13.98 $/hby means of SPECO method. According to the results of the NSGA-II optimization method, the exergy efficiency and total cost rate of the overall system are evaluated as 6.93% and −2.51 $/h, respectively. Furthermore, it is also proposed that 1304 dwellings can be heated owing to the DH system utilizing the existing exhaust gas.