Project description: Advanced Process Engineering Co-Simulator (APECS)

Developed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), in collaboration with R&D partners ANSYS/Fluent, Aspen Technology, ALSTOM Power, Reaction Engineering International, Carnegie Mellon University, Iowa State University, and West Virginia University, APECS is an innovative co-simulation software tool that uses the process-industry standard CAPE-OPEN interfaces to combine best-in-class commercial process simulation and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for optimizing overall plant performance with respect to complex thermal and fluid flow phenomena. At NETL, system analysts are applying APECS to reduce the time, cost, and technical risk of developing high-efficiency, near-zero emissions power plants such as the coal-fired, gasification-based plant in the $1 billion, 10-year DOE FutureGen R&D Initiative.

Offered commercially by ANSYS/Fluent, APECS is used by engineers and researchers in the process and energy industries, as well as academia, national laboratories, and other research entities. In the chemical industry, process engineers use APECS to optimize the performance of their chemical production plants by analyzing the impact of complex reactor mixing and fluid flow phenomena on overall plant product quality and yield. In the U.S. and U.K. power industries, cycle engineers employ the APECS technology to develop competitive power plant solutions with significantly reduced development costs and technical risk. In the research community, APECS is used for d evelopment of optimization-based reduced-order models based on CFD results, coupling process/CFD co-simulation to immersive 3D virtual engineering software, and stochastic analysis and multi-objective optimization capabilities for process/CFD co-simulation.

APECS Features

• CAPE-OPEN standard software allows for plug-and-play interoperability of unit operation models, physical properties, and reaction kinetics.
• Configuration Wizard prepares equipment models as CAPE-OPEN compliant models for use in process simulation.
• Model Database stores and manages equipment models, including CFD, custom, and fast reduced-order models (ROMs) based on previously-computed CFD solutions.
• Model Selection GUI displays equipment models from the database to associate with blocks instantiated on the process flowsheet.
• Model Edit GUI displays equipment model parameters and defines flexible and powerful solution strategies.
• Integration Controller uses a CAPE-OPEN COM/CORBA bridge to enable serial/ parallel execution of high-fidelity equipment models on distributed heterogeneous computers.
• CFD Viewer displays, within the process simulator, the results of CFD simulations conducted as a part of a co-simulation.
• Analysis Tools provide CAPE-OPEN compliant multi-objective optimization and stochastic simulation for risk/uncertainty analysis.

Benefits Achieved

• Helps engineers to better understand and visualize the fluid flow behavior that impacts process design and operation.
• Considers detailed equipment models in the context of plant-wide simulations, with recycle loops, heat integration, and water management.
• Enables rigorous analysis and optimization of entire plants with respect to CFD-related equipment model parameters.
• Eliminates potential for suboptimal designs by using the same physical properties and reaction kinetics in the underlying equipment and process models.
• Speeds technology development by reducing pilot/demo-scale facility design time and operating campaigns.
• Offers opportunities to address the challenge of designing next-generation plants to operate with unprecedented efficiency and near-zero emissions, while operating profitably amid cost fluctuations for raw materials, finished products, and energy.

Awards

APECS earned a prestigious R&D 100 Award from R&D Magazine for being among the 100 most technologically significant products introduced into the marketplace in 2004. In 2006 and 2007, APECS received regional and national Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Awards for Excellence in Technology Transfer.