Integrated conventional and advanced exergy, exergoeconomic, and exergo-carbon footprint assessment for a solar-assisted SOFC-CCHP system

Migrating to low-carbon poly-generation systems is vital for achieving sustainable energy objectives. The coupling of solar resources, hydrogen fuel cells, and combined cooling, heating, and power configurations presents a promising solution. However, a holistic framework for analyzing these systems from an integrated thermodynamic, economic, and environmental perspective remains underdeveloped. Addressing this need, this study investigates a solar-assisted solid oxide fuel cell-combined cooling, heating, and power system and proposes an integrated evaluation framework. This framework merges conventional and advanced exergy, exergoeconomic, and exergo-carbon footprint assessments. Through a two-dimensional decomposition technique-utilizing avoidable/unavoidable and endogenous/exogenous splitting-this approach quantifies the actual improvement potential for exergy destruction, costs, and carbon emissions by disentangling specific component weaknesses from system-wide interaction effects. The results indicate that the system exhibits a total avoidable exergy destruction of 0.331 MW (accounting for 14.28%), an avoidable exergoeconomic cost rate of 58.90 $/h, and an avoidable exergo-carbon footprint rate of 188.93 kg CO2-eq/h. By isolating significant endogenous avoidable shares, the absorption refrigeration system, solid oxide fuel cell, and afterburner are distinguished as critical candidates for retrofit through the advance analysis, effectively mitigating the selection biases common to conventional methods. Ultimately, this work establishes a powerful tool for the rigorous and rational appraisal of complex renewable energy architectures.