The National Energy Technology Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE/NETL) recently awarded ISU Distinguished Professor and Herbert L. Stiles Chair of Chemical Engineering Rodney Fox a $300,000 grant to develop a methodology for estimating uncertainty in simulations of multiphase gas-particle flows, and to implement it into computer code developed at NETL for the simulation of gas-particle flows.
Fox’s computational process can play a key role in preventing costly mistakes in designing gas-particle flow devices used in energy production. Such devices include coal combustors, gasifiers and reactors that produce polymers and biofuels. Limiting uncertainty creates reliable simulations that translate to more efficient energy production in the field.
Fox and his team of Dr. Alberto Passalacqua, post-doctoral research associate at ISU, and Assistant Professor Prakash Vedula from the department of aerospace and mechanical engineering at University of Oklahoma use computational fluid dynamics methods to analyze gas-particle flows in aforementioned devices in energy production. Their process can also be used with gas-particle flows in environmental engineering (like volcanic eruptions and dust storms) and aerospace engineering (helicopter brownout).
Fox and his co-workers will develop an efficient method to investigate how errors and uncertainty in the input of a numerical simulation affect the results in the complex models used to describe multiphase gas-particle flows.Their process will allow one to predict the behavior of gas-particle flows with detailed computational models, estimate errors committed during the simulation and quantify the reliability of the results. The goal is to ensure their models are suitable to be used in energy production environments.