To celebrate the University's research successes, the University of Hull is offering, in an open competition, up to 80 full-time UK/EU PhD Scholarship or International Fees Bursaries. The below project is eligible for funding under this Scholarship scheme.
Studentships will start on 28th September 2015
CO2 emissions may contribute to climate change. Post-combustion CO2 capture (PCC) with solvents is the most promising technology for reaching CO2 emission reduction targets from coal-fired power plants. Deploying PCC plants to operate flexibly following electricity load changes in the power plant is a challenging task considering that it is a far slower process compared to the power plant.
In the Process and Energy Systems Engineering Group led by Dr Wang (inside School of Engineering), dynamic models for coal-fired supercritical power plant and PCC plant have been developed based on first principles. With this solid foundation, transfer function or state space models will be obtained through system identification for the main process loops. The aim of this study is to perform system identification and control studies of PCC plant integrated with supercritical coal-fired power plant based on process modelling and simulation.
The following objectives have been identified: (a) Literature review on current status in modeling, system identification and control of power plant and carbon capture plant; (b) To carry out process analysis with gPROMS models developed in gPROMS for power plant and carbon capture plant; (c) To carry out system identification for power plant and carbon capture plant; (d) To explore MPC for control of power plant and carbon capture plant; (e) To assess the process control performance.
This proposed PhD project will be executed with one EU FP7 IRSES funded project - Research and Development in Coal-fired Supercritical Power Plant with Post-combustion Carbon Capture using Process System Engineering technologies (R-D-CSPP-PCC-PSE). Therefore the PhD student will have opportunities to visit top universities in China such as Tsinghua University, South East University and East China University of Science and Technology.
The applicant should have an MSc or MEng degree in Process Engineering, Chemical Engineering or Control Engineering.