A new demonstration version of Thermoptim published in May 2020 gives access to certain advanced functionalities of the software package which allow working on subjects hitherto reserved for higher versions:

• technological design of components and study of their behavior in off-design conditions

• exergy balances and productive structures

• pinch method or thermal integration

All Thermoptim users can thus learn how to calculate the area of a heat exchanger, how to establish exergy balances thanks to the productive structures and how to implement the pinch method.

Like the previous one, this demo version does not allow you to save diagrams and projects, but it opens all the working files of the software package.

Seven new guided explorations have been created to guide users in this learning.

• Two are dedicated to the technological design of components and the study of off-design behavior

  • the first deals with the calculation of the area of ​​an air-water heat exchanger with tubes and fins

  • the second allows to study the behavior of a positive displacement compressor in off-design mode.

• Two relate to the exergy balances and the productive structures.

  • the first explains how the productive structure of a steam plant cycle can be built and how we can deduce its exergy balance.

  • the second presents the productive structures and the exergy balances of four different cycles: regenerative gas turbine, refrigeration machine, regeneration reheat steam cycle, single pressure combined cycle.

• The last two guided explorations illustrate the implementation of the pinch method.

  • the first to optimize a heat network,

  • the second to design a dual pressure combined cycle.

The guided exploration on the heat network is completed by another exploration explaining how to calculate the area of the exchangers defined previously and how to establish the exergy balances of the initial and optimized network.

These guided explorations were added to the 24 previous ones that were put online in 2017 as resources for the Thermodynamic Heat Conversion MOOCs.

Like the previous ones, they can be viewed either in a classic browser or in the Thermoptim browser capable of directly emulating the software package.

You will find in these pages all the explanations on the guided explorations and the Thermoptim browser.

Do not hesitate to let us know your comments and possible suggestions by sending us an email to info@thermoptim.org.