Undergraduate Mathematical Sciences Seminar
Thursday, May 7, 2009, 12:30 -- 1:50pm
Computational Fluid Dynamic Modeling of a Downdraft Wood-Fired Furnace
Megan Karalus, UW Mechanical Engineering Department
Abstract: Most heat their homes with natural gas, fuel oil, or electricity, but about 3% of US households use an hydronic wood fired furnace. Three key attributes that can answer growing environmental and economic concerns are making wood, and other biomass, an increasingly popular fuel: they have the potential to be 'carbon neutral,' they're local, and they're renewable. With growing popularity however, comes regulation, and in 2008 EPA enacted a certification program to regulate particulate emissions from residential wood fired furnaces. Unfortunately, most units were designed via 'rules of thumb' and 'trial and error', and only recently have various modeling methods been introduced.
In this talk, we will explore the application of packaged CFD software to the problem of modeling furnace operation. We will take one particular downdraft unit -- the Aspen -- as an example, and using this we will discuss the development of the model, the numerical difficulties of the problem, the results of the model, and their applicability to the issue of emissions reduction