{"id":55610,"date":"2024-02-26T11:04:35","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T16:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simcenter\/?p=55610"},"modified":"2025-12-17T13:16:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T18:16:08","slug":"reach-great-sustainability-successes-with-simcenter-system-simulation-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.stage.sw.siemens.com\/simcenter\/reach-great-sustainability-successes-with-simcenter-system-simulation-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Reach great Sustainability successes with Simcenter System Simulation \u2013 Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This blog post is the Part 2 of a blog series for addressing industry Sustainability challenges with Simcenter System Simulation\u00a0. A quick overview is introduced in the previous Part 1<\/a> with explanations why Simulation is really appropriate to address Sustainability challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this blog let us explore how simulation helps to address sustainability challenges of components supplier i.e., everything ranging from gears, pumps, compressors, extends up to renewables and energy saving, or simulation in operations. They all contribute to reach your Sustainability targets in your company. Let’s have a look together to understand how System Simulation can help there.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Sustainability with digital twins using System Simulation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Sustainable components with suppliers<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sustainability encompasses a broad range of subjects that cater to diverse user profiles, extending beyond integrated systems and production machinery to include individual components integral to smart products. Upon closer examination, virtually every component within machinery holds implications for sustainability. Addressing these challenges early in the design process has the potential to transform them into a sustainable competitive advantage by gaining a deeper understanding of the functional physics involved.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Diverse industrial machinery sub-segments offer multiple opportunities to build sustainable machines<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Practically, we see that System Simulation is well adapted for all components. It concerns gears, pumps, compressors, heat exchangers, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Examples of more sustainable components<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\ud83d\udca7\ud83c\udf21\u26a1\ufe0f You can see that there\u2019s the \u201cenergy efficiency\u201d topic always listed when designing or upgrading these components. For the hydraulic\/pneumatic components, the thermal-hydraulic or two-phase flow components, or the electro-mechanical systems. With some additional moves towards electrified components.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within few seconds of execution, System Simulation can provide metrics about power losses, efficiencies or energy saving, so it\u2019s easy to investigate multiple  scenarios. Simulation can also help to justify the investment for better components, to buy better efficient products that are usually more expensive, or to switch to electrified components that require some adaptations.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Electrification of components: electric machines, batteries, thermal management<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u26a1\ufe0f\ud83c\udf21\ud83d\udd0b Practically, we can think about electrified gear pumps, or electric fans or any other components to replace your legacy components. You can investigate the thermal management of e-machines, up to the battery runaway to ensure safety and to prevent the risk of fire. All these aspects need to be formally checked during your sustainability journey to convert the components you\u2019ve been using for years to more efficient or electrified components. That\u2019s where digitalization is of great help and makes the difference with other traditional approaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Renewables and energy saving<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s now look at the renewables and energy saving. Just to say that we have such energy application with Simcenter Amesim. For example with the Green hydrogen production<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Renewables: green hydrogen production<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u267b\ufe0f\ud83d\udca7\u26a1\ud83d\udcb0 We can predict in few seconds the distribution of Hydrogen production over months thanks to wind turbines, solar panels, wave energy converters and an electrolyzer to store energy in the hydrogen tanks. At the end, green energy is produced and it can be used for your production machines or plant facilities, so that your carbon footprint is significantly reduced.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Renewables: green hydrogen-based microgrid<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u267b\ufe0f\u26a1\ud83d\udd0c Also we can go more at the electrics side, with this digital twin of a green hydrogen-based microgrid<\/a>. The goal is to optimize the global system efficiency considering thermal management. You can check your power mix (solar, electrolyzer, fuel, cell, battery, \u2026) over months. To finally verify that it\u2019s compatible with the electric load, and that it can be supplied properly to the grid.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Renewables: solar photovoltaic panels<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u2600\ufe0f\u26a1\ud83c\udf3b\ud83c\udf0f You can even consider using solar panels for producing electricity<\/a> with solar energy, which can be stored in batteries with BESS (battery energy storage systems). The digital twin can help find the optimal settings for sizing the solar panels depending on your GPS location (if you\u2019re located in Tokyo, Berlin, Madrid or Detroit) with different solar irradiances, weather conditions, \u2026) to simulate if it\u2019s sufficient to supply enough electricity for all your factories depending on the seasons or during the different months of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83d\udea2\ud83d\udc1f For ship delivery when shipping your production to different countries worldwide, you can consider retrofitting cargo ships with Flettner rotors<\/a> to improve propulsion. It\u2019s a way to increase fuel economy and get significant reduction of CO2 emissions with just a small investment.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Marine: Flettner rotors are vertical cylinders to propel ships using wind<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

You can even study the influence of the sea route conditions<\/a> (good weather, bad weather) and the ship speed (slow, fast) on the travel time, fuel economy and CO2 emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just to say that System Simulation is perfect and well appropriate to reach nice achievements for sustainability in your company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone is quite impressed by all these capabilities to get great outcomes. But it\u2019s not only during the product engineering process with \u201cSimulation for Design\u201d that you can benefit from System Simulation capabilities to achieve sustainability goals., Also through the \u201cSimulation in Operations\u201d where practical significant gains can be reached directly onsite, close to the hardware devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simulation in operations<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cSimulation in Operations\u201d technique helps to leverage the simulation model built during the design phase to have insights during machine operation or in-services. Either with Edge computing or with Cloud computing.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Simulation in operations \u2013 Edge computing or Cloud computing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Here\u2019s an example of \u00ab Simulation in Operations \u00bb with an Executable Digital Twin (xDT). It\u2019s an industrial heat pump for districts<\/a> with Model Predictive Control (MPC).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Industrial heat pump for districts with Model Predictive Control (MPC)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\ud83c\udfd8\ufe0f\ud83c\udf21\ufe0f\u267b\ufe0f\ud83d\udd25 Practically it\u2019s a gas turbine combined cycle (GTCC) with a heat-pump added, also a storage. It\u2019s executed in real-time, using a mixed approach<\/a> between the field streamed data and the results of the dynamic simulation model. So it allows predict in real-time the future behavior so one can benefit from the strong fluctuations in energy price and production profiles. With a significant reduction of OPEX (operating expenses). Practically, it\u2019s software (controller) and hardware (plants) onto a real system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can also imagine other use cases in operations. For example, with artificial intelligence (AI) where the digital twins can help generate a large amount of synthetic data. So it would replace the data generation with hardware devices in operations, which needs to be repeated until new scenario is being found, online. The high-fidelity simulations can quickly mimic the hardware behavior and generate the necessary data and reduce the costs, investigating many scenarios in few seconds of execution. Thereby the virtual data can complement with the real operational data, to train the AI algorithms upfront, offline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To conclude, we can extend the scope of System Simulation to help achieve the sustainability targets, up to a sustainable production at the factory level. Typically customers have interest to get metrics for its CO2 transparency, to optimize its Energy management or to better know how to use On-site Renewables.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Sustainable production \u2013 Optime processes and infrastructure for sustainability<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\ud83c\udfed\ud83d\ude97\ud83d\ude9a Target the carbon neutrality of your factory, implementing renewables energies or hydrogen fuel cell forklifts, batteries or engaging with process electrification. There are many technology options available. System Simulation can definitely provide insights to select the best options, storage systems, plant configurations while optimizing the cost of operation. One can also take into account industrial buildings\u2019, its HVACR or surrounding systems to become more sustainable. It helps to take strategic decisions to transition your assembly plants or facilities to reach carbon neutral operations. What a great objective!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Takeaways<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s now time to sum-up the main benefits of using System Simulation for Sustainability.<\/p>\n\n\n

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How Simcenter System Solutions help for sustainability, as of today<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n