The South African Business Exchange Pty Ltd, a wholly owned Billcad subsidiary, has recently been awarded an ESKOM contract for further research in the field of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). In general CFD can be used to study any system with fluid flow, heat transfer and chemical reactions. It has been used in South Africa mostly in the Power Generation and related Industries.
According to Mr. Rudi Crous, Product Manager, SABEX was selected as a result of its unique CFD capabilities in modelling complex systems, computing facilities available and the existing relationship with ESKOM Technology Group.
ESKOM`s interest in CFD is based on the enormous cost savings possible by optimising processes in power generating plants, using cost effective modifications. For this project, a blow-down vessel will be modelled, in order to verify its safety. The solution requires solving the modelling of a free surface, two-fase flow, with mass transfer between phases and is therefore on the cutting edge of CFD technology.
ESKOM Technology Group has a well-established CFD capability of their own. SABEX was however selected because of their background in modelling similar systems as well as their exceptional computing power available. For this project, SABEX will construct a supercomputing cluster of 10 parallel processors in order to solve the model. Jaco De La Rouviere, CEO of Billcad Holdings, completed similar projects, for solving problems in Finite Element Modelling.
The algorithm design has been done jointly between Armscor Technology Group and Softflo, who is designing the software used for this particular project. Most of the research facilities and universities in South Africa have been co-operating to extend the industrial applications of CFD. Dr. Louis Le Grange, Director of Softflo, has a close association with the University of Potchefstroom. He is acknowledged as a world leader in the field of CFD technology.
The completion of this project will cast new light on the behaviour and design of blowdown systems and will enhance the safety of the plant as well as personnel. Furthermore, the extenuation of this state of the art technology will also make it possible to model complex flow systems, which was previously considered not possible to study.
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