Reliability and availability modelling of a retrofitted Diesel-based cogeneration system for heat and hot water demand of an isolated Antarctic base

The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a relevant challenge for a sustainable development. Waste heat could be used to produce hot water by using a recovery system. This article studies the availability of a combined heat and power systems (CHP) in extreme area (Antarctic) through the integration of a waste heat recovery system with a diesel generator to produce hot water. The reliability and availability principles are incorporated to explore how the profile of hot water consumption and the hot water storage tank size affect system availability. Different combined heat and power systems are thus classified, and their availability indexes modelled by adopting the continuous Markov approach and the state space model. The results indicate that the CHP systems availability is strongly influenced by the daily hot water demand profile. As a useful recommendation, one of the considerations for increasing availability, reducing costs and greenhouse gas emissions with the CHP system is to include a hot water tank in the analysis.