Chemical Engineering November 2019 - 31

CFD for improving operations
CFD enables engineers to maximize throughput, innovate on new products,
enhance process stability across the plant, drive sustainability and develop
new processes more efficiently. The following are examples of how CFD can
be applied to improve each of these.
Flow distribution. Most chemical companies do not design their own plant
equipment; rather, they own assets and operate them. The key issue is
throughput and finding new ways to push more material through production.
Can they get more from their assets than they already have? How
can they manage flow distribution to avoid erosion, corrosion and extra
pressure drops? How will existing assets behave under different products
or materials?
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CFD delivers both a virtual visualization of the flow, as well as a quantitative
description of how uniform or non-uniform the flow will behave across
any section of the system (Figure 3). Empowered with this predictive modeling,
engineers can best determine how to ensure flow uniformity throughout
the entire system to better maximize throughput, yield and the operational
efficiency of plant equipment.
Scaleup. CFD is also instrumental for supporting the scaleup process, especially
in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. During this process,
engineers run experiments inside a laboratory on a much smaller piece of
equipment to be tested. This bench- or laboratory-scale equipment is used
to develop the product. Then, through the scaleup process, questions of
how this product can be manufactured on the commercial scale are answered.
CFD is used to estimate how the commercial-scale process will
perform and the corresponding outcome on the product.
Process stability. CFD also helps drive process stability. Chemical engineers
must manage problematic issues, such as rust buildup in pipelines
and fouling, erosion, hotspots, dead spots and cold spots in chemical
plants. Through CFD modeling, engineers can predict and identify these
issues before they materialize in the plant and deal with them to deliver an
enhanced level of efficiency, reduce downtime and help ensure safety. Also,
the stability of the process against process or material variability can be
simulated using CFD.
Process intensification. While engineers want production to run cheaper,
better and more reliably, they also are focused on process intensification
that allows greater energy efficiency and the creation of more sustainable
products through reuse or product redesigns.
Enhanced efficiency. Companies that employ CFD have better insights
into their processes. This enables them to operate their equipment at
lower cost, potentially reduce emissions and delay unwanted maintenance.
Using the additional insight from CFD, plant operators can reduce
material waste tremendously.
Within the chemical industry, engineers focus on reducing the time and effort
required to develop new processes or redesign or retrofit existing equipment.
Achieving this while the plant is in production can be prohibitively
expensive and disrupt plant operations. However, this can be accomplished
offline virtually with CFD.
High-performance computing
As with other aspects of engineering, CFD offers varying levels of fidelity. As
the complexity of the problem increases, engineers may use more computational
points or look at transient aspects of a given problem. Advanced
CFD tools provide different modeling capabilities that can run on anything
from a standard laptop to a high-performance computing (HPC) system.
Leveraging highly scalable HPC unlocks virtually unlimited compute capacity.
This enables engineers to rapidly run complex, large model, high-fidelity
CFD simulations, perform parametric studies and remove any restrictions
that could compromise a design, cutting months off development cycles
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Chemical Engineering November 2019

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