Traditionally the process of taking a new power plant system from the drawing board to a first-of-a-kind prototype has involved a series of progressively larger engineering test facilities and pilot plants, leading ultimately to a full-scale demonstration. The process can take 20 years or more and cost billions of dollars.

Because of the significant efforts by DOE in the design and construction of advanced energy systems, traditions have changed. Engineers using sophisticated computer modeling and simulation are capable of "engineering" and testing new power processes well before the first metal is cut for a new pilot plant. Through the use of computational flow dynamics, 3-D visualization, process simulation and a host of other computational techniques, engineers are able to determine whether a new concept's physical and chemical systems perform as predicted, a future power plant's mechanical systems function properly, and whether the plant will succeed in meeting its efficiency and environmental goals - all displayed on a computer screen.

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"Virtual engineering" is proving to be one of the most important innovations for proving the viability of new and untested power plant designs. While it may not eliminate the need for some engineering prototypes, it will almost certainly reduce their number, thereby compressing the time needed to develop and test new concepts and significantly reducing the cost of the research, development, and deployment process.

The Office of Fossil Energy established a Computational Energy Science focus area at its National Energy Technology Laboratory in 2000, expanding on existing high speed computing capabilities.

We conduct computational research, providing insights into the complex interactions of physical and chemical systems encountered in advanced energy plants. High-speed computer simulation and modeling methods have been developed to advance technologies such as gas turbines, fuel cells, gasifiers, combustors, gas cleanup processes, and heat exchangers and the coupling of these devices together in clean efficient energy plants.

An integral supporting activity is the Supercomputing Science Consortium. This organization provides high-speed access to the Pittsburgh supercomputing center and support for improving computer codes.

The Computational Energy Science focus area is divided into three components:

1. To develop sub-models and codes of fossil energy processes in several levels of detail and sophistication, and combine these models to describe steady state operation and later the dynamics of a complete energy conversion device. Ultimately, these devices will be integrated into a model of an overall energy plant. These blocks of code are fossil energy processes configured in a variety of ways that may be of interest to future program managers, engineers, owners, and investors.

2. To maintain and upgrade hardware for computation and visualization needed to perform these simulations.

3. Maintaining the infrastructure of the Computational Energy Sciences co-laboratory and industrial partnership network which will provide the human resources needed to conduct simulations and transfer the knowledge to industry.