This paper is concerned with developing several model-size reduction techniques for the analysis of large-scale renewable production and supply networks. They are (i) Reducing the connectivity in a biomass supply chain network, (ii) Eliminating unnecessary variables and constraints, (iii) Merging the collection centres. The proposed model-size reduction techniques brought computational time improvements of several magnitudes compared, with the high performance linear system solution techniques and still with a little loss in accuracy. When the methods are combined the time reductions are more significant. A proposed procedure for combining the methods can be implemented for any supply chain model with a large number of components.
COBISS.SI-ID: 15554070
This paper presents a method for estimating the maximum pressure of steam which can be generated in recovering heat from individual processes, by partial linearization of the grand-composite curve. The technique is based on the pinch-analysis method by using a grand-composite curve (GCC), which can be approximated by using a mathematical function. The mathematical linear technique is composed of two steps: i) an analysis of the possibility of additionally-available heat flow rate integration from different processes into one basic process, and ii) an estimation of the maximum possible steam-pressure to be generated. This linear technique was applied in an existing silver and oxide formalin process, resulting in generation of more steam with higher steam-pressure, thus producing an additional profit of 183900 EUR/a.
COBISS.SI-ID: 14959126
This paper presents simultaneous integration of different technologies such as the traditional dry-grind process to obtain ethanol from grain with the gasification of the corn stover followed by either syngas fermentation or catalytic mixed alcohols synthesis. The optimal integrated process when using the entire corn plant (18 kg/s of grain and 10.8 kg/s of stover) is the one in which the dry-grind technology to process corn grain is integrated with the catalytic path for the corn stover due to the improved integration of energy, requiring only 17 MW of energy, 50 MW of cooling and 1.56 gal/gal of freshwater, for an ethanol production cost of 1.22 $/gal. However, the production cost decreases as we only use stover to produce ethanol, while the grain is used for food due to the lower cost of the stover and the more favorable energy balance of the ethanol production process from gasification.
COBISS.SI-ID: 14800150