An application of the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition method to the thermo-economic optimization of a dual pressure, combined cycle powerplant

This paper presents a thermo-economic optimization of a combined cycle power plant obtained via the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition-Radial Basis Functions (POD-RBF) procedure. POD, also known as "Karhunen-Loewe decomposition" or as "Method of Snapshots" is a powerful mathematical method for the low-order approximation of highly dimensional processes for which a set of initial data is known in the form of a discrete and finite set of experimental (or simulated) data: the procedure consists in constructing an approximated representation of a matricial operator that optimally "represents" the original data set on the basis of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the properly re-assembled data set. By combining POD and RBF it is possible to construct, by interpolation, a functional (parametric) approximation of such a representation.