Thermal Power Library – Release 1.13

ThermalPower 1.13 is so far the largest release since the first version. It contains a large set of new features and improvements that will open up new application areas and make the modeling and user experience more efficient and easier.

Highlights include a new solar package with components and plant example for Concentrated Solar Power applications including parabolic trough and power tower. Another highlight is a nuclear steam generator plant system based on the conceptual design of the ALMR (Advanced Liquid-Metal Reactor) PRISM reactor as documented in the early 1990s, which has been developed in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ThermalPower 1.13 also has a new polynomial based steam and water medium which can be used in dynamic optimization problems or as an alternative to the high precision WaterIF97 when simulation performance is prioritized. Also on the flue gas side there is a new faster alternative to the Nasa based gas media which will speed-up your simulations.

For further details see the list of changes below.

New features

  • Solar package with components and plant example for solar applications. The solar sub-library contains models for Concentrated Solar Power applications including parabolic trough and power tower. It contains models for energy storage, insolation, heliostats, central receiver, cloud coverage, absorber tubes with glass coverage and heat transfer correlations, solar field and the heat transfer fluids TherminalVP1 and Solar salt. There is also a complete central receiver solar power plant based on the test facility Solar Two in California which include the control system and Rankine cycle.
  • Nuclear steam generator plant system. It is based on the conceptual design of the General Electric Company ALMR (Advanced Liquid-Metal Reactor) PRISM reactor as documented in the early 1990s. It was developed in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory for plant supervisory control. The model includes parallel pumps, bypass valves, moisture separator reheater and control system. It has been developed to be generic and reconfigurable.
  • Polynomial based water and steam medium. It can be used in dynamic optimization problems or as an alternative to the high precision WaterIF97 when simulation performance is prioritized.
  • Fast gas media with analytic inverse functions. This media can be used as a slighly less accurate alternative to the Nasa based gas media with the advantage of improved simulation performance.
  • Multi-stage turbine templates. Several new steam turbine models with various numbers of stages have been added. The user can now quickly set-up the turbine generator system.
  • Visualization of valve input signal.
  • Inverse block for ThermalPower.TwoPhase.Valves.ValveLiquid, ThermalPower.TwoPhase.TurboMachinery.Pumps.PumpGeneric and ThermalPower.TwoPhase.TurboMachinery.Pumps.PumpPosDispl. The inverse block calculates which input that is required for the valve or pump to give a certain mass-flow. This feature makes it possible to design controllers with feedforward compensation. This is especially useful for level control of drum, condensor and feedwater heaters.

Improvements

  • Check that nominal parameters have the correct sign. If false an assert is triggered with a descriptive error message.
  • Extended turbine summary record with vapor mass fraction and inlet and outlet specific enthalpy.
  • Improved nominal operating point calculation of ThermalPower.TwoPhase.TurboMachinery.Turbines.SteamTurbineStodola. A new parameter h_nom has been added to better separate between nominal and start values. The default value of pstartin and pstart have been changed so they are equal to p1_nom respective p2_nom. Previously the default values of p1_nom and p2_nom were calculated from pstartin and pstart.
  • Extended condenser, drum and dearator summary record with condensing level in percentage.
  • Restructured examples package with models sorted according to application area and renaming overCriticalRankine400MWe to superCriticalRankine400MWe.
  • Improved graphical icons. This makes it easier to align graphical connections.

Fixed issues

  • Corrected Medium propagation in examples models.

Conversion of user libraries

Automatic conversion of user libraries from version 1.12 is supported using the included conversion script convertLibraryName_1.12_to_1.13 located under ThermalPowerResourcesScripts.

Requirements

Thermal Power Library 1.13 is based on Modelon Base Library 2.5 and Modelica Standard Library 3.2.2.

Tags:
Release Notes, Thermal Power Library, Energy & Process