Dynamic Simulation of Energy Systems: Comparison of a Physics-Based Against Time Constant Based Approach Applied to a Microturbine Test Rig

Abstract

As distributed systems arise as the dominate approach in energy production, new and time-effective methods to study global configuration of small scale generation systems have to be discovered. This work proposes a comparison between two disparate approaches to microturbine modelling. The target system is a modified Turbec T100 microturbine coupled with an external vessel, which aims to simulate the dynamic global behavior of a fuel cell gas turbine hybrid system generator. The first model is based on first principles with ordinary differential equations to capture the dynamic performance of the turbine and it is developed with Matlab/Simulink environment. The second model is based on a simplified-physics time constant approach and it is developed with Excel/Visual Basic software, thus aiming at a viable tool for distributed applications, despite any lose in accuracy. Both models have been verified against the experimental data of the microturbine test rig, and compared in terms of computational efforts, modelling flexibility, prediction accuracy.

Dynamic simulation of a solar-hybrid microturbine system with experimental validation of main parts

“…The reflectance of cavity, the convective heat transfer coefficient and radiative heat transfer coefficient through aperture are calculated by Eqn. ( 17) to (20), respectively. Therefore the heat loss through aperture (Eqn.…”

“…The simulation tool TRANSEO based on MATLAB-Simulink environment is suitable for wide applications: from a stationary microturbine to a complete hybrid fuel cell system [19]. Roberts [20] proposed that the physic-based simulation had a better accuracy compared to the time constant based approach for a microturbine test rig. Martin [21] introduced a FORTRAN in-house simulation tool which was developed by DLR.…”