Abstract
The system for designing the gas separation membrane module, which consists of three engines, was developed. The engine of creating a separation modular structure generates the arrangement coordinates data of a separation unit by GUI, and generates the input file for hydrogen recovery rate calculation. Since this engine can respond to a cylinder and square pillar type module outward form and can respond to unit arrangement of a triangular lattice or a square lattice, the output of the unit arrangement coordinates of general multi-pipe set structures (separation, extraction, heat exchanger, etc.) is possible for it. The engine of performing hydrogen recovery rate calculation uses a commercial computer fluid dynamics (CFD) package, receives input data from a modular structure generation portion, and outputs a convergence calculation result to a file. The engine, which optimizes modular structure, evaluates output results by CFD, and repeats processing in which the structure parameters generated by the genetic algorithm and output results are stored in a database. In the structure design of a separation membrane module, it became clear that the genetic algorithm could optimize efficiently about modular size and element size, or its arrangement.
