Investigation of an efficient and green system based on liquid air energy storage (LAES) for district cooling and peak shaving: Energy and exergy analyses

• A green hybrid system based on liquid air energy storage, Kalina, and absorption cycles. • A comprehensive and systematic evaluation of the proposed hybrid concept. • Achieving the round trip energy and exergy efficiencies of 66.32% and 49.75%. • Reaching a payback period of 3.5 years and total profit of 11.45 $M. • Analyzing the system performance based on real data in California, the USA. Liquid air energy storage is a very new energy storage technology for large-scale applications with brilliant advantages over the other available grid-scale storage concepts such as higher energy density and no topographical restriction. In the present study, to assist more development of this technology, an efficient and green multi-generation system based on the liquid air energy storage, absorption cycle, and Kalina system is proposed and deeply investigated from the first and second laws of thermodynamics and economic. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis is conducted to scrutinize the effect of critical parameters on system performance. The proposed system can be efficiently used for power and cooling capacity production during peak demand periods, both of which can assist peak shaving and grid stability. Thermodynamic analysis indicates that during peak demand periods, a power of 5300 kW is generated by the air turbine during 3 h and with round trip energy and exergy efficiencies of 65.7% and 49.7%, respectively. The economic analysis shows that the investment cost of the system is around 3.68 $M and the referenced system has a payback time of 3.6 years and a total turnover of 11.3 $M can be achieved at the end of 25th year.