CFD to aid clean coal research

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Apr 20, 2005

Computational fluid dynamics specialist Fluent has been chosen to participate in the US Department of Energy's (DOE) latest group of clean coal research projects.

Computational fluid dynamics specialist Fluent has been chosen to participate in the US Department of Energy's (DOE) latest group of clean coal research projects.

These projects support the goal of developing a zero emissions coal-fired power plant, along with related policy initiatives in energy, climate, and hydrogen, including the FutureGen zero-emissions power plant of the future.

On 16th March 2005, US Secretary of Energy, Samuel Bodman, announced the Fluent award as part of a portfolio of $62.4 million for 32 clean coal research projects.

Secretary Bodman said: "Coal is our most abundant fuel resource".

"It's important that we find ways to use it in a cleaner, more efficient way in order to provide the energy needed to continue our economic growth and job creation".

"All of these projects are an investment in our Nation's energy and economic security, present and future".

Fluent, leads a research team including Alstom Power, Aspen Technology and Carnegie Mellon University, and it will develop a "software framework for advanced power plant simulation".

This integrated capability will link a hierarchy of plant-level and equipment-level models that will have varying levels of fidelity and computational speed suitable for either preliminary conceptual design or detailed final design.

The simulations will accelerate technical advances in important clean coal areas such as gasification, pure hydrogen production, and carbon capture and sequestration.

Project objectives include steady-state and dynamic simulation, computationally efficient reduced order models (ROM), and a 3D virtual reality walkthrough capability.

The use of leading commercial, advanced software tools as the backbone of the simulator will ensure that the infrastructure will remain supported and available to the industry far into the future for simulating advanced power plants.

The overall project will be managed by the DOE Office of Fossil Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and it will support NETL's Coal and Power Research and Development (R and D) programme in the power systems advanced research area.

As proposed, the project will comprise approximately $2.5 million in government and contractor cost-shared funds, with DOE contributing approximately $1.9 million.

"Fluent and its team are enthused about continuing the collaboration with NETL that began in 2000 to advance the frontiers of virtual power plant design", said Lewis Collins, the company's Director of Funded Development.

"We believe that the new software tools developed through this project will significantly improve the ability of engineers to create innovative new concepts leading to reduced plant life cycle costs, increased energy efficiency, and reduced environmental impacts".