Clean Conversion of Fuels
Techno-Economic Assessment of New Power Plant (Dr DR McIlveen-Wright):
Cleaner Combustion is represented by techno-economic assessments of carbon capture systems and their associated cleaner coal combustion systems have been carried out utilising ECLIPSE, a process simulator developed by the University of Ulster and used in evaluating many future power plant projects within the European Union and UK. It has been validated against many different actual systems in order to prove its applicability. Other projects include evaluation of systems co-firing lignite and biomass, coal and biomass and the use of fuel cells in future power plant developments.
Assessment of Future Energy Demands (Professor NJ Hewitt):
This project will analyse the impacts of future energy technologies upon the types power generation that Ireland will need within the medium to long term. It will use the in-house plant process simulator Eclipse which is a proven techno-economic analysis tool for predicting plant performance, emissions, running costs and capital costs. This project will develop the necessary data modules required for Eclipse by first understanding Ireland's current energy needs and how these are met and then using our considerable experience in European power generation projects and understanding the strategic flows of energy, ascertain what might be the best combination of future power plants that can best meet the improved energy demands of buildings, with for example, considerable embedded generation capabilities for the most advantageous combination of capital cost, running, costs, security of supply and environmental emissions.