Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
When we realized we had a problem, we thought for a while how to do it... how to attack
the problem and what to...how to respond to it. My boss at the time, Kurt Sangster, a
sharp fellow, I think he was the one who had the idea to, because he had knowledge of Purdue
through some other things that he was doing with the university and became aware of CIVS
and the modeling group, and so I think it was his idea to... let's see if we can bring
them in to solve this essentially flow problem. Following a pollution control installation
we found that we had a derate of the unit where we couldn't get enough airflow through
the unit. The fans that were previously capable of producing full flow were no longer. So
we did experience a flow related problem. Again, our awareness of the potential of CIVS
to research and conduct trial and error solutions to flow problems caused us to come to you.
So again, it was a match of our problem with flow and realizing that you had a potential
solution for studying, understanding, and resolving the flow issue. The solutions that
the research center provided, after understanding that they... the flow problem, we got inside
and saw that indeed we did have a re circulation zone, we did have a something robbing us of
the capacity of the unit, we came up with different turning vane applications. We installed
some turning vanes in the computer model and saw that the flow did change. It was able
to change the pattern and the re circulation zone of the problem. Better yet, we were able
to get inside and visualize it and see the re circulation, see how the re circulation
changed as we modified the turning vanes, and so we'd come up with a second set of possible
vanes and we got the output of those and saw how things improved and this way and that
way and how the changes caused the... the changes in the turning vanes caused a change
to the flow. So we continue using a trial and error method to continue modifying the
turning vane design and we went through some forty different, forty-plus different turning
vane configurations before we finally chose the best one. So it was a great example of
trial and error, get inside, using the simulation and the visualization to understand how the
turning vane configuration changes improved or didn't improve so well and worked our way
toward the optimal solution. It was a great example of working together very well with
people who were quite motivated and eager to solve our problem, very impressing. Following
the study of the various turning vane options to resolve the problem, we did implement one
of the solutions chose, the optimal of them. We were under time contraints because of an
upcoming outage where we shut down for four weeks and do a bunch of other work on the
unit and so the group worked very well with us working up towards that deadline and just
before the deadline came we chose the best solution and we bought steel to build that
design and we implemented it and following the outage, we got back online, we turned
the key on and found out that sure enough, the derate was gone we were now getting full
flow through the unit. So the implementation of the solution coming from the computerization
study, was completely successful. The solution was... the implemented solution was a dramatic
cost improvement for us. We were derated at one of the units to about ninty percent of
its output, taking away ten percent which is tremendously valuable to us. The value
of the implemented solution was estimated to be 1.9 million dollars per year and that
will continue on forever. A dramatic result. I feel the collaborations of local industry
with the CIVS folks are a dramatic win-win both for local industry who can get modeling
results, interactive work with the people doing that modeling are tremendously valuable
to industry. I'm also aware that this is helping the students become... developing as they
develope into young adults and into the workforce, that they are instead of just seeing problems
out of text books, they are now working with experienced people in industry, understanding
budgets and schedules and difficult problems and trial and error solutions and so I think
they too are developing. I truly think that collaboration with Purdue in this way is a
tremendous win-win for both the students and industry. I'm proud to have been involved
and I'm a great supporter because of that.