Modelling of utility power station boilers to improve efficiency

Project Title:

Modelling of utility power station boilers to improve efficiency

Supervisor(s):

Professor Steve Wilcox

Contact person and email address:

Steve Wilcox steve.wilcox@federation.edu.au

A brief description of the project:

A detailed knowledge of the heat transfer within high temperature industrial processes is extremely important. However, measurement of the heat transfer is time consuming and an extremely difficult enterprise, so generally estimates of the heat transfer are made by numerically modelling the process. This modelling can be achieved with either a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model or by using the zone method. The CFD model can be computationally very expensive but can provide great insight into the high temperature process. The zone method provides accurate calculation of thermal radiative heat transfer and also has a very short computational time that is of the order of a few minutes. This short run time makes the zone method particularly suitable for parametric studies to identify specific cases which can then be analysed in more detail by, for example, Computational Fluid Dynamics models.