Cost-effective design of thermal power plants using intelligent systems

An intelligent system developed at the Technical University of Berlin (Germany) for assisting in the design of cost-effective thermal power plants using heuristic rules and fuzzy approaches is described and applied to a simple plant. This intelligent system applies an iterative optimization technique that is based on assigning costs to the real thermodynamic value of an energy carrier and on the evaluation of performance parameters that reflect the cost importance of the real thermodynamic inefficiencies. Knowledge about identifying design errors is modelled by heuristic rules whereas the modification of decision variables is based on the application of fuzzy approaches. Recent developments in the use of intelligent systems for process synthesis and improvement are reviewed.