4E analysis of an integrated solar-biomass heating system: A case study in rural housing of northern China

Primary energy shortage and serious environmental pollution have aroused considerable interest in the investigation of renewable energy heating systems. The integrated solar-biomass heating system has been a proven solution for this. This present work focuses on demonstrating the sustainable potential of integrated solar-biomass heating system into a rural housing to stabilize its performance and assessing its economic and environmental benefits. Accordingly, a 4E (energy, exergy, economic, and environmental) analysis was conducted to analyze and evaluate the performance of the system based on the in-situ testing. The results demonstrate that the presented system can provide an improved thermal environment with an average indoor temperature of 16.49 °C. During the testing period, solar energy and biomass contributed 49.19 % and 50.81 % of the total energy demand of 6972.23 MJ, respectively. Subsequently, the average exergy efficiency of the integrated system, the solar heaters, the biomass boiler, and the radiators were 3.35 %, 2.65 %, 12.42 %, and 89.16 %, respectively. Besides, the presented system can save 1749.29 kg of standard coal every year, and the life-cycle carbon footprint was 78.65 % less than that of the traditional coal-fired boiler-based heating system. These results indicate that the integrated system can significantly reduce primary energy consumption and provide remarkable economic and environmental benefits.