MODELING UNCERTAINTIES IN ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES - APPLICATION TO A COAL-GASIFICATION SYSTEM WITH HOT-GAS CLEANUP

Uncertainties in the performance, emissions, and cost of advanced proc ess technologies in early stages of development pose a challenge to pr ocess evaluation. Failure to account properly for uncertainties may re sult in misleading estimates that are then used for making decisions a bout technology selection and research planning. A new stochastic mode ling capability has been developed for the ASPEN chemical process simu lator that allows uncertainties in any process technology to be repres ented using probability distributions. This capability is briefly desc ribed. A detailed case study of an advanced integrated coal gasificati on combined cycle (IGCC) system is presented to illustrate the applica tion of this capability. The case study involves identification and ch aracterization of uncertainties in model inputs, propagation of uncert ainties through the model, and interpretation of model results. The va lue of stochastic modeling is in the ability to evaluate the simultane ous effect of multiple uncertainties in a process technology and to de velop more realistic estimates of process performance and cost than wo uld otherwise be obtained from deterministic (point-estimate) analysis .