Multi-Scale Modeling of Rotating Stall & Geometric Optimization – Part A

Project Description

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from electrical power generation is one of the greatest engineering challenges for the 21 st century. Because fossil fuels are expected to continue to play a large role in electrical production until at least 2050, methods for capturing and storing carbon dioxide in cost-effective manner are urgently needed. The Department of Energy currently sponsors large – scale demonstration projects to prove the viability of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). A major technical challenge in CCS is compressing the carbon dioxide after it is captured. Dresser-Rand (D-R) is developing advanced high-pressure ratio single stage compression technology to reduce the cost of carbon dioxide compression. Dresser-Rand has previously used Titan to simulate carbon dioxide compression technology, and will test first-generation compression technology based on these results in 2015. The current work focuses on the multi-scale modeling of rotating stall in a centrifugal compressor and the advancement of the next generation of CCS compression technology by generating optimized designs of the existing compressor geometry. D-R has demonstrated effective leadership-scale computing on the Titan system through intelligently driven optimizations. The rapid development of new compressor designs is a salient example of the exceptional capabilities provided through the ALCC project, and the incredible scientific and industrial opportunities enabled by the conjunction of high-performance computing and large scale optimization methods.