New trigeneration system integrated with desalination and industrial waste heat recovery for hydrogen production

•Waste heat recovery from a glass melting furnace is utilized as heat source.•Trigeneration system includes electricity, hydrogen and fresh water core products.•A four-step copper-chlorine cycle is utilized in this paper.•Desalination produces 17.4 kg/s fresh water and hydrogen production rate is 12 g/s.•The overall energy of the integrated system is 47.7% and exergy efficiencies is 37.9%. An integrated trigeneration system for electricity, hydrogen and fresh water production using waste heat from a glass melting furnace is analyzed in this paper. The heat source for the integrated system is flue gas ejected from a glass melting furnace. This heat source is integrated with a thermochemical copper-chlorine (Cu-Cl) cycle for hydrogen production, reverse osmosis desalination for fresh water production, and Rankine cycle for electricity production. A four-step copper-chlorine cycle is used in this paper. The trigeneration system is modeled and analyzed in Aspen Plus simulation software and Engineering Equation Solver (EES). The reverse osmosis desalination unit provides the system with 17.4 kg/s of fresh water, while the hydrogen production rate is 12 g/s. Energy and exergy analyses are performed on the integrated trigeneration system. The overall energy and exergy efficiencies of the integrated system are 47.7% and 37.9%, respectively. Additional results and sensitivity studies are presented and discussed in this paper.