IAPWS Process Flowsheets & Simulations
Explore 2 validated, solved IAPWS simulation flowsheets in MaximaLabs — real components: water. Open any one directly in your browser.
Solved via: STEAM.
Rankine steam power cycle (pump -> boiler -> turbine -> condenser)
The classic steam power cycle behind most of the world's electricity, on the rigorous IAPWS-97 steam properties. Feedwater is pressurized by a boiler-feed pump, fired to superheated steam in the boiler, expanded through a steam turbine to make shaft power, then condensed back to water in the surface condenser. The four Rankine components appear in order, and the numbers are the real thermodynamic ones: at 60 bar / 500 degC steam expanding to a 0.1-bar condenser vacuum the turbine makes ~18 MW of shaft work at 85% isentropic efficiency, the exhaust leaves the turbine as wet steam (~92% quality, the classic low-pressure blade-erosion concern), the condenser rejects ~40 MW to cooling water, and the feed pump costs only ~0.15 MW (the small back-work ratio that makes the Rankine cycle practical, since pressurizing a liquid is nearly free next to expanding a gas). Cycle thermal efficiency comes out ~28%. Every property (the superheat enthalpy, the isentropic expansion endpoint, the exhaust steam quality) is the real IAPWS steam-table value, not a correlation.
6 unit ops • STEAM
109 1
View & openSteam utility island: deaerator, boiler, desuperheater
The three units that stand between raw makeup water and steam a turbine can accept, on the IAPWS steam tables. The deaerator takes 500 mol/s of 300 K makeup and 40 mol/s of LP steam and returns 540 mol/s of saturated liquid at 5 bar (425 K) for 3.23 MW. It is a direct-contact heater, so the heating steam does not leave — it condenses into the feedwater and shows up in the outlet flow. That is the point of the unit: the reason a plant heats feedwater by injecting steam into it rather than through a tube bundle is that boiling the water is what strips the dissolved oxygen out of it. The boiler then absorbs 26.6 MW into the water and fires 31.3 MW to do it — the gap is the stack loss, and it is the number a fuel bill is written against, not the absorbed duty. The desuperheater takes that 720 K steam down to a 660 K target by spraying 25.96 mol/s of water into it. The spray rate is SOLVED, not specified: you state the temperature you want and the unit finds the water that achieves it, which is how an attemperator is actually specified. Note the outlet is 566 mol/s, more than entered it, the spray water becomes steam. Bounded: the deaerator is an equilibrium model, so it reports no rate-based O₂/CO₂ stripping (there is no residual-oxygen ppb number here, which is what a real deaerator is guaranteed on), and the desuperheater assumes the spray fully evaporates.
6 unit ops • STEAM
10 0
View & open