An Integrated Framework to Address Criticality in Biomass Tri-Generation Systems via Redundancy Allocation

A tri-generation system is an energy network consisting of highly integrated process units that produce three products simultaneously. These systems often possess operational advantages compared to stand-alone units but may come at the expense of its process units being vulnerable to failure and its rippling effects. To overcome this issue, redundant process units are often allocated or on standby for an entire system. However, system-wide redundancy allocation demands high capital investment and is not always possible if there are capital budget constraints. Therefore, in order to address this issue, the most critical process unit in the system must be identified first prior to allocating equipment redundancy. This approach minimises the risk of overdesigning a particular energy system. This work presents an integrated framework for implementing redundancy based on the criticality of process units in a tri-generation system. Based on the proposed framework, criticality analysis is used to identify the most critical process unit by measuring the impact of a process unit’s disruption within an energy system. Following this, the proposed framework uses k-out-of-m system modelling to systematically allocate equipment redundancy on the critical process unit based on given budget restrictions. To demonstrate the developed framework, a palm-based biomass tri-generation system case study is solved.