 |
| The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center offices are located on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. |
The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) is one of the major resources for computational research in the United States. Formed through the collaborative efforts of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh together with Westinghouse Electric Company, PSC brings the availability of computational experts and the power of some of the fastest computers in the world to address energy and environmental challenges of the nation and region.
For Pennsylvania researchers, educators and students, PSC provides training, consulting, advanced network access and computational resources. Since 1999, through a regional partnership of research and educational institutions in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, the Supercomputing Science Consortium (SC)2, PSC has collaborated with the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Morgantown, West Virginia to advance the development of "clean power" technologies. Through this partnership, PSC has provided (SC)2 researchers with more than five-million hours of computing time for a range of clean-energy related research initiatives.
The World's Cleanest, Most Efficient Coal-Fired Power Plant
In one of these projects, computational modeling at PSC helped lead the way to commercialization of a technology, long on the drawing boards, called "coal gasification"—a process to turn coal into a gas that in turn produces electricity much more cleanly than direct combustion of coal. Based on success during the past five years of an NETL research program, construction has begun on a commercial coal-gasification plant near Orlando, Florida that is anticipated to be the cleanest, most efficient coal-fired power plant in the world by 2010.
"This major, unprecedented accomplishment in coal-gasification technology will allow us to continue using our most valuable energy resource in an environmentally acceptable manner," says Anthony Cugini, director of NETL's Office of Research and Development. "With sophisticated software and access to PSC supercomputing, our engineering-design team developed deep understanding of the complex processes of a coal-gasifier reactor system."
The Orlando plant will be the first commercial-scale power plant to incorporate a gasifier—called a "transport gasifier"—with integrated gasification combined cycle technology. Syngas from the transport gasifier will pass through a gas turbine to generate electricity, then heat water for a steam turbine that generates more electricity. Along with more electricity per ton of coal, there are essentially no emissions of sulfur dioxide and particulates, appreciably lower oxides of nitrogen and 25 percent less carbon dioxide. With help from supercomputing, Florida energy consumers will soon begin to reap the benefit.
Other clean energy projects supported by computational modeling at PSC include high-fidelity simulation of turbulent combustion, research on the development of fuel-quality hydrogen from fossil fuels and designs for "next generation" power-generating turbines. |
