Demonstrations of Coupled Cycle Analyses and CFD Simulations over a LAN

摘要

A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-sponsored project has been instrumental in developing an open software architecture and integration toolkit for embedding plug-and-play equipment models within a process/cycle simulation environment. The software viability has been demonstrated through the development of a general-purpose Integration Controller that links component modeling packages, such as the FLUENT® CFD software, to the Aspen Plus® process simulation software. The software toolkit (winner of a 2004 "R&D 100" award) uses the process-industry CAPE-OPEN interface standards for unit operations and physical properties. In this paper, two demonstration cases are discussed - (1) a natural gas-fired, combined cycle power plant, and (2) a FutureGen power and hydrogen production plant. For each demonstration case, a group of Aspen Plus® library modules were replaced with a FLUENT® CFD simulation of a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG). The demonstration cases were run over a local area network (LAN). The utility and potential of utilizing the powerful co-simulation capability for advanced cycle simulations is discussed.