By Stephane Neyrat
This blog article is the second in a series on using Simcenter System Simulation to address industry sustainability concerns. In the previous Part 1, a brief synopsis and justifications for the suitability of simulation in addressing sustainability concerns are presented. This blog post aims to discuss how simulation may assist suppliers of components—which include gears, pumps, compressors, renewable energy sources, and energy-saving technologies—in addressing sustainability concerns. They all help your business achieve its sustainability goals. Together, let’s examine how System Simulation might be helpful in this regard.
Sustainability covers a wide range of topics that appeal to different types of users. It goes beyond industrial machines and integrated systems to include specific parts that are essential to smart products. When you look more closely, almost every part of a machine has an impact on sustainability. By learning more about the underlying functional physics of these problems, addressing them early in the design process may turn them into a long-term competitive advantage.
As you can see, energy efficiency is a constant consideration when designing or upgrading these components, whether they are electro-mechanical systems, thermal-hydraulic or two-phase flow components, or hydraulic/pneumatic components, with some additional moves made in the direction of electrified components. System Simulation can offer measurements about power losses, efficiency, or energy savings in a matter of seconds after it is executed, making it simple to explore various scenarios. Additionally, simulation can support the purchase of more expensive but more efficient components, the conversion to electrified components that need some modifications, or both.
In a practical sense, we could replace your legacy components with electric fans, gear pumps, or any other component. To maintain safety and reduce the risk of fire, you can look at the thermal management of e-machines, all the way up to the battery runaway. When you embark on your sustainability journey, all these factors must be thoroughly examined in order to replace the old, inefficient parts with new, electrified or more efficient ones. Digitalization is quite helpful in this situation and sets itself apart from other conventional methods.
Now let’s examine energy conservation and renewables. Just to let you know, Simcenter Amesim is used for this kind of energy application. Take the creation of green hydrogen, for instance. Thanks to solar energy panels, wind turbines, wave energy converters, and an electrolyzer to store energy in the hydrogen tanks, we can anticipate in a matter of seconds how the production of hydrogen will be distributed over several months. In the end, green energy is generated, which you may utilize for your plant’s buildings or production machinery to drastically lower your carbon footprint.
We may even explore further into the realm of electricity with this digital replica of a microgrid powered by green hydrogen. Optimizing the overall system efficiency while taking thermal management into account is the aim. Over several months, you can examine your power mix (solar, electrolyzer, fuel, cell, battery, etc.). Lastly, to confirm that it can be correctly supplied to the grid and is compatible with the electric load.
You may even think about employing solar panels to generate electricity from solar energy, which BESS (battery energy storage systems) can then store in batteries. In order to simulate whether it will be sufficient to supply enough electricity for all of your factories depending on the seasons or during the different months of the year, the digital twin can help find the optimal settings for sizing the solar panels based on your GPS location (if you’re located in Tokyo, Berlin, Madrid, or Detroit) with different solar irradiances, weather conditions, etc.
Consider modifying cargo ships with Flettner rotors to boost propulsion when exporting your production to various nations across the world. With just a minor investment, it’s possible to achieve considerable reductions in CO2 emissions while also increasing fuel economy. You may even research how the weather along the sea route—good, poor, and in between—as well as the ship’s speed—fast, slow, and in between—affect trip duration, fuel efficiency, and carbon dioxide emissions. To sum up, System Simulation is ideal and highly suitable for achieving great results for the long-term viability of your business. Everyone is quite impressed by their qualities to produce excellent results. However, you can use System Simulation’s capabilities to accomplish sustainability goals not just in the product engineering phase with “Simulation for Design,” but also in “Simulation in Operations,” where major practical gains can be made close to the hardware devices, right on site.
Utilizing the simulation model developed during the design phase to get insights during machine operation or in-services is made possible by the “Simulation in Operations” approach. utilizing cloud computing or edge computing. Here is an example of using an executable digital twin (xDT) for “Simulation in Operations.” Model Predictive Control districts can use this industrial heat pump (MPC). In essence, it is a gas turbine combined cycle (GTCC) with an additional heat pump and storage. It is carried out in real-time by combining the output of the dynamic simulation model with field data that is transmitted. Thus, it makes it possible to forecast future behavior in real time and take advantage of the significant swings in energy prices and production profiles. with a notable decrease in OPEX (operational expenses). In practical terms, it’s hardware (plants) and software (controller) on a real system.
Other operational use cases are also conceivable. For instance, digital twins can assist in producing a significant quantity of synthetic data when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI). Thus, hardware devices would take the position of data generation in processes, which would have to be repeated until a new online scenario was discovered. High-fidelity simulations can investigate numerous situations in a matter of seconds, quickly imitating the behavior of hardware, generating the necessary data, and lowering expenses. In this way, real operational data can be combined with virtual data to train AI algorithms offline and ahead of time.
In summary, we can use System Simulation to help reach sustainability goals all the way up to factory-level sustainable production. Customers are typically interested in measures related to CO2 transparency, energy management optimization, or on-site renewables usage.
Aim for your factory’s carbon neutrality by introducing batteries, renewable energy sources, hydrogen fuel cell forklifts, and process electrification. There are lots of possibilities for technology. Without a doubt, system simulation may offer valuable insights for choosing the optimal alternatives, storage systems, and plant designs while maximizing operating costs. To become more sustainable, one can also consider the HVACR or surrounding systems of industrial buildings. Making smart decisions to convert your facilities or assembly lines to carbon neutral operations is helpful. What a fantastic goal!
