Example Aspen Plus chemical process simulations used in the book Exergy Tables: A Comprehensive Set of Exergy Values to Streamline Energy Efficiency Analysis, by Lingyan Deng, Thomas A. Adams II, and Truls Gundersen (McGraw-Hill Education, 2023). The examples are:

1. Medium-pressure steam generation using a natural-gas powered boiler
2. Medium-pressure steam generation using a natural-gas powered boiler with an economizer
3. Medium-pressure steam generation using an off-gas powered boiler
4. Postcombustion CO2 capture using diglycolamine (DGA) with CCS

Note, stream conditions may vary slightly from those in the book when simulated with different versions of the software.

Files are Aspen Plus v12.1, but should be openable on any version 12.1 or later.

In this study, cradle-to-product life cycle analyses were conducted for a variety of natural-gas-based and coal-based SOFC power plant conceptual designs, while also accounting for long-term SOFC degradation. For each type of plant, four base case designs were considered: a standalone SOFC plant, a standalone SOFC plant with a steam cycle, an SOFC/GT hybrid plant, and an SOFC/GT hybrid plant with a steam cycle. The boundary of each base case was subsequently expanded to include either wet cooling or dry cooling options and DC to AC conversion, and was subjected to additional cradle-to-product life cycle analyses. The environmental impact results were computed using ReCiPe 2016 (H) and TRACI 2.1 V1.05 in SimaPro. The main factors affecting the midpoint impacts between cases were the plant efficiency and total SOFC manufacturing required over the plant’s lifetime, which were both strongly connected to long-term degradation effects. The findings also showed that the standalone SOFC plant... [more]

SimaPro model used in this work.

The central theme of this webinar is computer-based tools made broadly accessible to students, educators, researchers, and lay people. Major platforms discussed include graphical user interfaces (GUIs), interactive notebooks (e.g., Jupyter Notebooks and MATLAB Live Scripts), and GitHub repositories. These tools have been used in instructing and engaging undergraduate chemical engineering students, preparing faculty for using these tools, training undergraduate and graduate students for computational research in science and engineering, and introducing lay audiences to chemical engineering concepts in informal learning environments outside of the classroom. These and other resources are available in a collection of open-source materials available at http://github.com/ashleefv. Also in this collection is an open-source learning module that the presenter created and packaged (with support from CACHE) for an upper division/graduate elective course, focused on practical computational scienc... [more]