In a trigeneration plant, the thermal energy recovered from the prime mover is exploited to produce a cooling effect. Although this possibility allows the working hours of the plant to be extended over the heating period, providing summer air conditioning through thermally activated technologies, it is rather difficult to find experimental data on trigeneration plant operation in the literature, and information on the performance characteristics at off-design conditions is rather limited. The paper has the aim of illustrating the experimental data of a real trigeneration system installed at the Politecnico di Torino (Turin, Italy). The system is composed of a natural gas 100 kWel microturbine coupled to a liquid desiccant system. The data are presented for both cogeneration and trigeneration configurations, and for full and partial load operations. An energetic and economic performance assessment, at rated power operation, is presented and compared with the partial load operation strategy. The primary energy savings are calculated through a widely accepted methodology, proposed by the European Union, and through another methodology, reported in literature, which, according to the Authors, seems more suitable to describe the energetic performances of trigeneration plants.
