Design and evaluation of a municipal solid waste incineration power plant integrating with absorption heat pump

The absorption heat pump can consume a small amount of high temperature heat source instead of electricity to realize the waste heat recovery. It has a potential to be applied in the energy efficiency improvement of municipal solid waste incineration power plant. In this study, a proposed integrated system has been designed, where the sludge heat pump drying system and dump pit heating system are coupled with the absorption heat pumps. The power generation improvement is evaluated through simulation calculation by EBSILON Professional and Aspen Plus. The results show that the power generation of proposed integrated system is 1.21 MW higher than that of reference power plant in winter operating condition. This is mainly due to the reductions of energy loss and exergy loss in incinerator and boiler system according to the energy flow and exergy flow analysis. The extracted steam from turbine is more suitable than the flue gas out of bag filter as the high temperature heat source of heat pump. In addition, the variable operating condition analysis is carried out for the proposed integrated system.