Integration of APECS and VE-Suite for data overlay

In the design of advanced power generation facilities, process simulation tools are being utilized to model plant behavior and quickly analyze results. While such tools enable investigation of crucial aspects of plant design, typical commercial process simulators still do not explore some plant design information, including high-fidelity data from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models of complex thermal and fluid flow phenomena, economics data used for policy decisions, operational data after the plant is constructed, and as-built information for use in as-designed models. Software tools must be created that allow disparate sources of information to be integrated for facilitating accurate and effective plant design. At the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), the Advanced Process Engineering Co-Simulator (APECS) has been developed as an integrated software suite that combines process simulation (e.g., Aspen Plus®) and high-fidelity equipment simulation (e.g., FLUENT®). In this paper, the integration of the high-fidelity CFD data with overall process data in a virtual power simulation environment will be described. More specifically, we will highlight VE-Suite, an open-source virtual engineering (VE) software toolkit, and its support of Aspen Plus® Hierarchy blocks via the VE-AspenUnit.