Clean and Efficient Coal Gasifier Designs using Large-Scale Simulations
Principal Investigator: Madhava Syamlal
Affiliation: National Energy Technology Laboratory
Machine: Cray XT4
Allocation: 3,000,000 processor hours
Research Summary: This project will conduct high-fidelity simulations of a coal gasifier to obtain critical information to speed design of efficient, reliable advanced fossil-fuel plants. It will demonstrate the impact of large-scale parallel computing on reducing the cost and time of developing tomorrow’s zero-emissions power plants. Using a multiphase computational fluid-dynamics model that has been calibrated with data from lab-scale experiments and a pilot-scale gasifier, researchers will study the effect of various operating conditions on the performance of a commercial-scale Clean Coal Power Initiative transport gasifier. The simulations will provide insight otherwise unavailable because no experimental measurements or visualizations exist for gasifier operating conditions.