Application of CFD to model Air-assisted Industrial Flares under Low-Btu Low-flow Rate conditions

Paper from the AFRC 2015 conference titled Application of CFD to model Air-assisted Industrial Flares under Low-Btu Low-flow Rate conditions

The goal of this study is to use CFD simulations to accurately estimate the destruction and removal efficiency (DRE), combustion efficiency (CE), and species emissions from an air assisted industrial flare under low-Btu and low-flow rate condition. Combustion engineers face serious challenge in accurate prediction of efficiency and pollutant emissions from combustion systems. Flares, is one such technology which carries additional obstacles in measuring the data, hence the dearth of good experimental data. One such rare data was collected during TCEQ flare tests conducted at John Zink facility in 2010. The simulation was setup to replicate these tests in ANSYS R16. The simulation uses inbuilt combustion and turbulent model and was performed on an optimum size mesh. The simulation results not only show a good match with combustion efficiency data, also the prediction of species concentration is comparable with experimental data. The effect of crosswind velocity on efficiencies can also be observed in the simulation results.