The Carbon Capture Simulation Initiative (CCSI), led by the Office of Fossil Energy’s (FE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), released the CCSI Toolset as open source software.

The CCSI Toolset is the nation’s only suite of computational tools and models designed to help maximize learning and reduce cost and risk during the scale-up process for carbon capture technologies. The toolset is critically important to perform much of the design and calculations, thus reducing the cost of both pilot projects and commercial facilities.

The release makes the toolset code available for researchers in industry, government, and academia to freely use, modify, and customize in support of the development of carbon capture technologies and other related technologies. The toolset is hosted on GitHub.

Since the release of CCSI’s first toolset in 2012, the initiative exceeded goals, and earned an R&D 100 Award – an "Oscar of Innovation" – as one of the top 100 technology products of 2016. The major capabilities of the CCSI Toolset include:

• Rapid Computational Screening: Enables the comprehensive screening and evaluation of promising concepts at all scales (molecular through system-level) with a full understanding of underlying uncertainty and its spread throughout multi-scale analyses.
• Accelerated Design & Evaluation: Reduces the time needed to design and troubleshoot new devices and processes by using optimization techniques that focus technology development within the best overall system context. This effort is supported with detailed, validated models to better understand and improve the performance of complex systems. These models also help to maximize learning during each stage of the development process from laboratory to pilot to demonstration to commercialization.
• Risk Management Support: Supports quantitative predictions of the performance ranges of devices and processes during scale-up. Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) is based on fundamental, rigorously validated simulations that consider model and parameter uncertainty. UQ also identifies which data is the most critical to obtain and helps determine how best to conduct testing to maximize the information that is obtained. UQ evaluates the risk and utility assessment in decision-making (which will be unique to each facility) to more accurately understand the impact of uncertainties to economic, environmental, and other planning decisions.

Led by NETL, CCSI leverages the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Laboratories’ core strengths in modeling and simulation—bringing together the best capabilities at NETL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. CCSI has more than 50 industrial partners, who represent the power generation industry, equipment manufacturers, technology providers, engineering and construction firms, and software vendors. The project’s academic participants include Carnegie Mellon University, Princeton University, West Virginia University, Boston University, and the University of Texas.

This critical work is being extended by the Carbon Capture Simulation for Industry Impact project, which is using the CCSI Toolset to support the scale up of second-generation capture technologies and the development of new transformational carbon capture systems through partnerships with technology developers.

To learn more about the programs within the Office of Fossil Energy, visit the Office of Fossil Energy websiteor sign up for FE news announcements.