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BPT High-fidelity Lifecycle Simulators

Green Twins accelerate the Green Shift

Advanced, Green
Process Innovations

Technology & expertise to explore and optimize green energy production processes

Based on unique process domain and advanced simulation expertise gained over decades, BPT is the default partner in any green energy concepts or projects.

Energy companies, plant designers, equipment vendors and investors typically involve BPT during concept design to validate and de-risk the process and energy systems involved.

Complex equipment and systems in green energy processes are modelled in selected industry-standard process simulator and enhanced by BPT when necessary, providing accurate, robust and efficient tools with high-fidelity performance. We enhance existing or develop new unit operations as extensions to the market-leading process simulators like HYSYS, UniSim and Petro-SIM for challenging and complex process facilities. Often this also include reimplementation or new thermodynamic property and equation of state packages.

The models used for design stage are further used in control system validation, operator training and performance monitoring during operation. The technology and knowledge represent a high-fidelity lifecycle simulator. Digital Twins. The GREEN TWIN.

More about BPT
Green energy and complex unit operations:

Key areas of BPT involvement

BPT has in-depth knowledge and experience in developing and enhancing the process simulator unit operations, processes and thermodynamic properties. Some examples are listed below:

  • Haber-Bosch
  • Fisher-Tropsch
  • Syngas
  • Steam reforming
  • Hydrogen production
  • Amine gas treating
  • CO2 with impurities
  • Alkaline electrolysis
  • Solid oxide electrolysis cells
  • Polymer electrolyte membrane cells
  • Applied reactor modelling

"Partnering with leading innovators and green energy pioneers
- representing a wide variety of frontrunning technologies and end-products."

BPT focused green energy processing plants

From exploring and solving specific technology gaps and critical green processes - to high-fidelity life-cycle, plant-wide engineering, training and production simulators and twins.

Electro fuels (e-fuels)

Carbon-neutral synthetic fuels (synfuel) and other fossil replacement products

CO2 captured from air or CO2 from concentrated industrial combustion emission is processed through synthesis (syngas) reactor, electrolysis (adding water and renewable power) and Fisher-Tropsch synthesis reactor turning carbon dioxide into fuels like Jet-Fuel (Kerosene), Naphtha, Diesel and wax.

Commercially available industry-standard process simulators don’t meet the requirements for accurate and fast performance capabilities that leads to uncertainty in design and inefficient work processes.

BPT is working with the development of new or enhanced unit operations and fit-for-purpose thermodynamic property packages in creating high-fidelity simulators of complete Electro fuel processes.

Concentrated solar power (CSP)

With supercritical CO2 as energy carrier

Supercritical CO2 as the working fluid in a closed-loop recompression Brayton cycle has demonstrated high efficiency and compact equipment sizes (compared with the traditional superheated steam cycles) at temperatures relevant for CSP applications.

Experience with industry-standard process simulators and most used thermodynamic packages shows slow speed performance for pure CO2 and severe challenges meeting speed and accuracy requirements. The impact of CO2 impurities is high, resulting in lower fidelity simulator accuracy.

BPT is working with new implementations of thermodynamic Equation of State (EOS) handling CO2 impurities in simulators that improve speed and accuracy performance for supercritical CO2 processes.

Air separation unit (ASU)

Cryogenic heat exchange

Air separation plants separate atmospheric air into its primary components - nitrogen, oxygen and argon.

Simulator modelling of cryogenic air separation, which utilizes the differing condensing/boiling points of the components of air to enable separation by distillation at cryogenic temperatures, is challenging and often leads to results with a lot of uncertainty.

BPT has unique and hands-on expertise in modelling such complicated equipment units, combining a deep understanding of simulator unit operations and thermodynamics as well as how to reconfigure/tune commercial process simulators to highly accurate solutions adding value.

Carbon capture utilization & storage (CCUS)

The process of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) before it enters the atmosphere

Usually, the CO2 is captured from large point sources, such as coal-fired power plants, cement kilns, chemical plants and biomass power plants. It is then stored in an underground geological formation or reused in the production of high-value chemicals to prevent the release of CO2 from heavy industry.

CCUS causes several challenges for simulator modelling because it is using a variety of technologies, including absorption, adsorption, chemical looping, membrane gas separation and gas hydration. This requires special attention to thermodynamic properties used in the process and modelling of the various unit operations.

BPT has the capabilities to create tailormade simulators for CCUS and develop extensions to industry-standard simulators to close the gap of shortcomings and fidelity.

Hydrogen production

The industrial methods for generating hydrogen gas

Most hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels by steam reforming of natural gas and other light hydrocarbons, partial oxidation of heavier hydrocarbons and coal gasification. Other methods of hydrogen production include biomass gasification, no CO₂ emissions methane pyrolysis and electrolysis of water.

Developing high-fidelity simulators of hydrogen processes introduces several challenges as mainstream simulators do not have ready-made models for some of the reactors involved in modelling for the various types of electrolysis cells.

BPT creates custom models that can easily be used by process design engineers to come up with the most efficient plant configuration without the need to worry about the special models required.

Ammonia production

Ammonia is one of the most produced inorganic chemicals, mainly used for fertilizing agricultural crops

Ammonia is produced in a process known as the Haber process, in which nitrogen and hydrogen react in the presence of an iron catalyst to form ammonia. The hydrogen is formed either by reacting natural gas and steam at high temperatures or through electrolysis using green power. The nitrogen is supplied from an air separation unit that could also be driven by green power.

Ammonia production has several challenges for simulator modelling because it requires custom modelling of the reaction kinetics for accurate representation of the process.

BPT can embed the required reaction kinetics into modules that are usable in most simulators, thus enabling the designer to create models with ease and allowing them to focus on practical engineering challenges.

Methanol production

Direct synthesis from CO2 and hydrogen

This is a specific use case of CCUS described in earlier section. Methanol is traditionally synthesized from synthesis gas. Direct synthesis from CO2 and hydrogen is a promising technology.

Direct synthesis kinetics are required to properly model this synthesis route. The available literature often doesn’t provide reaction kinetics in the form available in the existing process simulators. This synthesis route produces by-products that are either not produced or not in same amounts in the synthesis route using syngas. Thermodynamic models will need to be tuned to properly model the separation of these impurities.

BPT has the capabilities to implement any available literature reaction kinetics in a form usable inside mainstream simulators. BPT has the expertise to tune available thermodynamic models or implement custom thermodynamic models to accurately simulate the behaviour of the impurities.

Biofuels

Organic materials (biomass) transformed into fuel such as ethanol and the biodiesel

Biomass can be converted to fuel by pyrolysis, hydrotreating or gasification. They mainly differ in the process temperatures and the amount of oxygen present during the conversion process. Pyrolysis entails heating organic materials in the near-complete absence of free oxygen. Biomass pyrolysis produces fuels such as charcoal, bio-oil, renewable diesel, methane, and hydrogen. Hydrotreating is used to process bio-oil (produced by fast pyrolysis) with hydrogen under elevated temperatures and pressures in the presence of a catalyst to produce renewable diesel, renewable gasoline, and renewable jet fuel. Gasification entails heating organic materials with the injection of controlled amounts of free oxygen and/or steam to produce synthesis gas. Syngas can be used as a fuel or as feedstock to produce liquid fuels.

Biomass is not defined in the traditional compositional way; it is rather characterised in terms of atomic composition. This composition needs to be converted to molecules to enable modelling in the process simulators. The reaction paths and kinetics of pyrolysis, gasification and hydrotreating may be complex and in a form not immediately suitable for use in a simulator.

BPT has the capabilities to model biomass and its conversion to molecules. BPT can package the specific kinetics and reaction paths in an easy-to-use package, suitable for process engineers.

"BPT high fidelity GREEN TWINS de-risk critical process developments, drive digital innovations and create operational excellence."

More information - or a specific case / project you want to discuss?

If you want to know more about BPT Green Twins - and our competence and services within alternative energy sources - feel free to give us a call for an informal chat. Or send us an E-mail - or use the form on the contact page, and we will get back to you quickly.

Henrik Billington
Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Advisor
Per H. Billington
E-mail:
per@bpt.no
Phone:
(+47) 90 12 42 84
Knut Erik Spilling
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Knut Erik Spilling
E-mail:
kes@bpt.no
Phone:
(+47) 90 08 79 76