Green hydrogen for new power plants
TU researchers gain access to JUPITER supercomputer
2025/03/28
How can green hydrogen burn CO₂-free in future gas turbines safely, efficiently and cleanly? This key question for the energy transition, which researchers at TU Darmstadt are working on, is one of the first challenges for JUPITER, the first European exascale supercomputer.
A TU research group is one of only a few in Germany to have access to JUPITER, which is currently being put into operation at Forschungszentrum Jülich. The team led by Dr.-Ing. Hendrik Nicolai and Professor Christian Hasse at the Simulation of Reactive Flows (STFS) department was selected with its project “HyCoMES” (“Data-Driven Hydrogen Combustion Modeling using Exascale Simulations”) as part of the GCS Exascale Pioneer Call.The project focuses on the use of hydrogen in future gas-fired power plants and aircraft engines.
With the computing capacities in the so-called exascale range available for the first time in Europe through JUPITER, direct numerical simulations can now be carried out that fully resolve the highly complex dynamics of turbulent hydrogen flames in space and time under realistic gas turbine conditions. Exa stands for 1018, i.e. a one with 18 zeros, which corresponds to one trillion. This is how many floating point operations such as addition or subtraction are performed per second.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Hasse,
Department of Simulation of Reactive Flows.
"I am very proud that our project has been selected by an international group of experts as a lighthouse application on the first European exascale computer. Over the past few years, we have worked intensively with ETH Zurich and Forschungszentrum Jülich to make efficient use of the new generation of GPU-based supercomputers. For the first time, we can simulate turbulent hydrogen flames under realistic conditions - i.e. at high pressures, temperatures and large Reynolds and Karlovitz numbers. This allows us to combine fundamental scientific questions directly with practical challenges. I will be particularly pleased if our basic research combined with AI methods is used in pilot projects with industry in the future, for example in the development of innovative hydrogen gas turbines."
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Herbert De Gersem,
Spokesperson profil topic Computational Engineering
“In the profil topic Computional Engineering (CE), we research methods of computer-aided modelling and simulation to optimize future technical systems. 'HyCoMES' impressively demonstrates how supercomputing enables deeper insights into physical phenomena, without which urgently needed future technologies such as hydrogen gas turbines for aircraft would be impossible. Such projects have enormous appeal - also for our students, who have a great interest in helping to shape technological progress.”
Prof. Dr. Felix Wolf (on the right),
Spokesperson of NHR4CES - National High Performance Computing for Computational Engineering Science
"In NHR4CES, TU Darmstadt and RWTH Aachen University are pooling their expertise in software development and the use of high-performance computers. We are proud that researchers from our Simulation and Data Lab Energy Conversion will be among the first to compute on JUPITER. We want to use the experience gained from this to further expand the hardware and software environment on our systems and to support our users.”
Background
The TU project “HyCoMES” is a JUPITER use case from the field of heat/process engineering – fluid mechanics. The JUPITER Research and Early Access Program is intended to ensure the smooth launch of the first European exascale supercomputer JUPITER.
The GCS Exascale Pioneer Call provides computing time for selected projects to enable ground-breaking research. The computing time resources are divided into two parts: On the one hand, resources will be distributed after JUPITER is officially operational until the end of October 2025. Secondly, it guarantees successful projects early access to JUPITER during the set-up phase.
