Green Twins is a data-driven digital-twin platform aimed to virtually represent, optimise, and eventually control carbon capture in industrial processes and to minimise the associated energy cost. The project’s emphasis is on digital-twin model development and the building of a digital-twin interface to handle data and perform control. For the duration of the project, one main (pre)industrial is envisioned: the digital twin of (defined parts of) the pilot plant for solvent-based capture of CO2 from flue gas.
Three types of models are planned in the Green Twins project. The first model includes detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models based on physical partial differential equations (PDEs). The second type of models include reduced, lumped models that simplify the detailed physical picture. The third type is full-scale plant models represented by flow diagrams in Matlab’s Simulink (SimScape). These models use the above reduced models as physical inputs and can represent various virtual control scenarios. Once these controls are virtually executed, they will be put in the form of software executables to enable the driving of various active parts (pumps, valves) of the pilot plant.
The project is expected to inform operators of the plant – and of other carbon capture (industrial) units in the future – of the details of hidden dynamics of the carbon capture processes in the plant, enabling them to optimise CO2 capture and related energy costs. In addition, the project creates new engineering jobs in the niche of green digital twins for CCUS. Finally, digital twins scale more easily than physical systems. Hence there is an opportunity for Denmark to export Green Twins rather than physical counterparts for carbon capture, with global impact.
