Performance Evaluation of Gas Turbine Cogeneration Plants Using a Design Optimization Tool: OPS-Design

To attain the highest performance of gas turbine cogeneration plants, it is important to rationally determine their structures as well as equipment numbers and capacities in consideration of their operational strategies corresponding to seasonal and hourly variations in energy demands. However, it needs much task and time. In this paper, a design optimization tool named “OPS-Design” is developed to determine the structures as well as equipment numbers and capacities for given super structures of energy supply plants. This tool uses optimization approaches based on the mixed-integer linear programming, and has a user-friendly interface for the functions of data registration, graphical flowsheet editing, automatic programming and optimization calculation, and graphical representation of results. In addition, the performance of a gas turbine cogeneration plant is evaluated using the tool in terms of the annual total cost and primary energy consumption. It is demonstrated that the tool is very effective to evaluate the performance rationally, easily, and flexibly.