(489d) Dynamic Multiphysics Modeling of Thermal-Fluid Systems: Accelerating Development of Carbon-Capture and Grid-Storage Technologies.

In order to keep global-temperature rise to less than 1.5 ^oC since industrialization, rapid deployment of carbon-capture and sustainable-energy technologies will be required. At Carbon America and StorWorks, we are developing and deploying point-source carbon-capture and electrical power grid storage technologies. Our R&D approach relies heavily on computational modeling to accelerate technology development and scale-up. Dynamic multiphysics models of thermal-fluid systems will be presented in this talk along with their application in a couple case studies. The continuum-scale models include thermal and mass transport, equations of state, and phase transition. Dynamic simulations are implemented by discretizing process equipment in one spatial dimension and evolving the resulting system of differential equations in time. We have implemented the thermal-fluid models and numerical methods in-house using the Julia programming language. Julia’s just-in-time compiler and multiple-dispatch features enable rapid code development while retaining run-time performance on par with C and Fortran. We show how the models can be used to enhance insights from laboratory and pilot-scale experiments; and to predict the energy efficiency of a point-source cryogenic carbon capture system.