{"id":4876,"date":"2014-10-29T15:25:44","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T04:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.computationalfluiddynamics.com.au\/?p=2090"},"modified":"2014-10-29T15:25:44","modified_gmt":"2014-10-29T04:25:44","slug":"smart-furnace-manufacturers-rising-gas-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leapaust.com.au\/blog\/cfd\/smart-furnace-manufacturers-rising-gas-costs\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart gas appliance manufacturers use rising gas costs to their competitive advantage"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Australian gas prices for both commercial manufacturing and domestic households have\u00a0been increasing steadily, with a 36% increase in gas prices over the last five years. Gas prices are now are tipped to skyrocket further from now until 2018, with regulatory changes meaning the Australian gas industry\u00a0is ramping up gas production to export to Asian markets where prices are considerably higher.\u00a0 It is forecast that the effect of this structural\u00a0change in Australia\u2019s gas market <\/a>is likely push up the average household bill by more than $300 a year in key ‘heating’ markets such as Melbourne. It is expected that this substantial rise in gas prices over such a short space of time will push Australian consumers to replace their ageing gas heaters, with\u00a0energy efficiency ratings being the main factor affecting their purchasing decision.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This represents an opportunity for engineers and designers of gas-fired appliances at smart manufacturers to gain an edge in the competitive Australian market.\u00a0At LEAP, we\u00a0have seen the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) gaining popularity as a R&D tool to\u00a0improve the overall operation and performance of gas heaters, from\u00a0conceptual designs through to detailed production designs (incorporating assessment of energy efficiency as well as important maintenance issues such as fatigue performance).\u00a0 Smart manufacturers are also realizing significant time and cost savings by using CFD upfront to reduce the number of (sub-optimal) physical prototypes they produce prior to consolidating their design.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In addition to improving overall energy efficiency and ultimately reducing fuel costs, CFD is being used to:<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Improve gas combustion process<\/span><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

ANSYS CFD is at the forefront of research and development\u00a0in this field, with accurate models continuously implemented to simulate the complex flow interactions and reactions in gas-fired combustion, with additional ability to track pollutants and dispersion of flue gases to conform to stricter environmental regulations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Detailed<\/a>
Detailed model of a gas-fired burner with induced air streams<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Improve and maximise heat exchange efficiency<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Engineers now utilize ANSYS CFD technology upfront during their conceptual design phase, combined with parametric CAD models and powerful in-built design optimization algorithms,\u00a0to drive tangible improvements in key\u00a0performance metrics\u00a0such as heat exchange efficiency.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Flow<\/a>
Flow path optimization to maximise heat exchange and improve efficiency<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"ANSYS<\/a>
ANSYS DesignXplorer used to build a response surface (left) and optimize a gas heater CFD model for the trade-off between power rating and efficiency<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Improve fatigue life due to thermal cyclic loading<\/span><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

ANSYS CFD\u00a0is also commonly\u00a0coupled with the ANSYS structural solver to investigate thermally-induced stresses and cyclic loading over the products lifetime. These quantities are critical to assessing the fatigue life performance of the gas furnace components, ultimately reducing the ongoing risk in providing a significant warranty period for\u00a0your product.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Thermal<\/a>
Thermal stress in heat exchanger tubing due to combustion process<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

These trends in gas prices have driven increased use of ANSYS CFD by a number of gas-heating\/furnace appliance manufacturers in Australia.\u00a0ANSYS CFD provides a fully parametric fluid-thermal-structure simulation environment to investigate energy efficiency, flow interaction within heat exchangers, flow reactions for heat release and combustion, and thermal stresses resulting from cyclic loading due to intermittent gas combustion. Our customers have confidence in the state-of-the-art and experimentally validated combustion and radiation models that are integrated within ANSYS CFD,\u00a0to provide useful quantitative and qualitative data including:<\/p>\n

– accurate heat transfer coefficients,<\/p>\n

– composition and temperature of flue gases,<\/p>\n

– thermal loading on structural components,<\/p>\n

– assessment of flow uniformity within the heat exchanger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With gas prices predicted to skyrocket in the next few years, an opportunity exists for engineers and designers of gas-fired appliances at smart manufacturers to use CFD to gain an edge in the competitive Australian market. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","neve_meta_reading_time":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[323],"tags":[171,174,396,398,407,201,215,431,50,474],"class_list":["post-4876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cfd","tag-ansys","tag-ansys-cfd","tag-cfd-simulation-accuracy","tag-combustion","tag-design-and-testing","tag-design-optimisation","tag-expert-training","tag-gas-appliances","tag-innovation","tag-radiation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leapaust.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leapaust.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leapaust.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leapaust.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leapaust.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.leapaust.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leapaust.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leapaust.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leapaust.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leapaust.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}