Development of a Digital Twin Platform for Industrial Energy Systems

Abstract

The reduction of waste heat in energy intensive industrial processes in combination with digital technologies will play a key role for the development and decarbonization of modern industrial energy systems. In the last few years, a significant share of the CO 2 related to energy was emitted by the industry sector. Since industrial processes often are batch processes, waste heat recovery in these processes requires thermal energy storage systems for closing the temporal gap between energy supply and demand. The ongoing digitalization in the field of industrial energy systems enables modern applications like digital twins to increase the efficiency of energy intensive processes. This paper presents the implementation of a five-dimensional digital twin platform for a packed bed thermal energy storage test rig. The five-dimensional digital twin platform allows the development of services and applications in interdisciplinary teams and facilitates their interaction on a standardized platform. By that the digital twin helps to make modern industrial energy systems more efficient.

Operation Planning with Thermal Storage Units Using MILP: Comparison of Heuristics for Approximating Non-Linear Operating Behavior

“…Because of the harsh operating conditions, slag dust is expected to accumulate inside the storage over time, which will change the operating behavior. In an ongoing research project a digital twin platform is being developed to monitor the PBR and to operate the storage efficiently and reliably during its whole lifetime [7]. The digital twin platform features a thermal model of the PBR that is adapted regularly to model the operating behavior of the storage accurately at all times.…”