Zuffi, C.; Ungar, P.; Fiaschi, D.; Manfrida, G.; Batini, F. Qualtra Geothermal Power Plant: Life Cycle, Exergo-Economic, and Exergo-Environmental Preliminary Assessment. Sustainability2024, 16, 4622.
Zuffi, C.; Ungar, P.; Fiaschi, D.; Manfrida, G.; Batini, F. Qualtra Geothermal Power Plant: Life Cycle, Exergo-Economic, and Exergo-Environmental Preliminary Assessment. Sustainability 2024, 16, 4622.
Zuffi, C.; Ungar, P.; Fiaschi, D.; Manfrida, G.; Batini, F. Qualtra Geothermal Power Plant: Life Cycle, Exergo-Economic, and Exergo-Environmental Preliminary Assessment. Sustainability2024, 16, 4622.
Zuffi, C.; Ungar, P.; Fiaschi, D.; Manfrida, G.; Batini, F. Qualtra Geothermal Power Plant: Life Cycle, Exergo-Economic, and Exergo-Environmental Preliminary Assessment. Sustainability 2024, 16, 4622.
Abstract
Qualtra, an innovative 10 MW geothermal power plant proposal, employs a closed-loop design to mitigate emissions, ensuring no direct release into the atmosphere. A thorough assessment utilizing energy and exergy analysis, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Exergo-economic and Exergo Environmental Analysis (EevA) was conducted.
The LCA results, utilizing the ReCiPe 2016 midpoint methodology, encompass all the spectrum of environmental indicators provided. The technology implemented makes it possible to totally avoid direct atmospheric emissions from the Qualtra plant, so the environmental impact is mainly due to indirect emissions over the life cycle.
The results obtained for the Global Warming Potential indicator is about 6.6 g CO2/kWh, notably lower compared to other conventional systems. Contribution analysis reveals that the construction phase dominates, accounting for over 90% of the impact in all LCA MidPoint categories.
At the component level, a single score calculation incorporating normalization and weighting was executed. The resulting single score is then used into Exergo-Environmental Analysis (EEvA), highlighting the well system as the most impactful contributor, constituting approximately 45% of the total impact. Other substantial contributions to the environmental impact include the condenser (21%), the turbine (17%), and the HEGeo (14%). The Exergo-Economic analysis assesses cost distribution across major plant components, projecting an electricity cost of about 8.3 c€/kWh.
Keywords
Geothermal Power Plant; Closed Loop; Zero Emisison; Life Cycle ANalysis; Exergy; Exergo-economics; Exergo-environmental analysis
Subject
Engineering, Energy and Fuel Technology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.