ProjectB17

Project B17 - Mathematical modeling of pressure retarded osmosis power plants

Principal Investigator: Ingenuin Gasser

Background and Motivation

Pressure retarded osmosis power plants generate power from mixing of saltwater and freshwater by means of membrane systems. Mathematical models for the plants ought be be simple enough to be amenable to optimization yet complex enough to contain the relevant chemophysics.

Aims and Objectives

Osmotic forces arise when freshwater and saltwater are brought into contact. The difference in chemical potential drives the water flow and may be used to produce work on a turbine. The amount of work produced is obviously reduced by irreversible losses. The ODE model is stationary and one-dimensional in space. It computes mass fluxes and pressures along the membrane based on the
conservation of mass and momentum. From the experimentalists' view point it is desirable to control the fluxes via the pumps at the entrances. Mathematically, this means prescribing appropriate
pressures at the entrances. As a result, a nonlinear parameter-dependent boundary value problem has to be solved. Simulations are performed that investigate some of the relevant technical parameters. Optimization with respect to system and operational parameters is straightforward.

Publications

F. di Michele, E. Felaco, I. Gasser, A. Serbinovskiy, H. Struchtrup: Modeling, simulation and optimization of a pressure retarded osmosis power station, Applied Mathematics and Computation, 353,
189-207 (2019).