A Practical Tool to Generate Complex Energy System Configurations Based on the SYNTHSEP Methodology

Year 2019, Volume: 22 Issue: 1, 45 - 53, 02.03.2019

Andrea Lazzaretto , Andrea Toffolo

https://doi.org/10.5541/ijot.506382

Cited By: 4

Abstract

Traditional fossil
fuelled power plants are commonly based on steam Rankine cycle or Brayton Joule
cycle. Using water or air as working fluid is obviously the most obvious choice
for the wide availability of these substances in nature. However, the scarcity
of natural energy sources and the strong need of reducing environmental impact
have necessarily drawn the research to new energy systems configurations
operating with other working fluids, which are able to recover lower
temperature sources, such as Sun or industrial wasted heat. The variety of new
working fluids (refrigerants or organic fluids) widens the choice to a variety
of configurations that can be tailored to the specific source characteristics
and boundary constraints. It is not always easy or even possible to conceive the
best configuration for given specifications with the mere experience of a
common designer. To design a new system configuration, the designer normally
uses some “non-codified rules” deriving from his knowledge of basic
thermodynamics and energy engineering. This paper aims instead at showing a
practical tool that is based on a new methodology, named SYNTHSEP, to generate
new energy system configurations. This methodology starts from the simple
thermodynamic cycles operated by a given fluid made up of the four fundamental
processes (compression, heating, expansion and cooling) and uses a rigorous set
of codified rules to build the final system configuration. The paper presents
the basics of the new methodology and how it has been implemented in a practical
tool that simply requires the information about the elementary cycles and their
shared processes as input data.

Keywords

Synthesis, system configuration, optimization

References

• Reference 1 prof. Christos Frangopoulos,National Technical University of Athens,Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering,9, Heroon Polytechneiou, GR 157 73 Zografou, GREECE, [e-mail]
• Reference 2 prof. Yoshiharu Amano,Waseda University, Department of Applied Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering, School of Fundamental Science and Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering,Tokyo, Japan, [e-mail]
• Reference 3 prof. Francesco Fantozzi University of Perugia Department of Enginnering, [e-mail]