Simulation made easy
Old stoves without secondary combustion can emit 40 grams or more particles per kilo of dry wood. The very best stoves, without catalyst or other measures, emit around 2-4 grams. To achieve this, most stove producers simply relay on experience and numerous experiments when they develop a new model. A cumbersome and expensive exercise.
In a Norwegian innovation project (2017-2019) granted by the Research Council of Norway, the CFD-tool Simcenter FLOEFD was selected as part of the research to determine if this could be used to improve the combustion in selected stoves. The industry partners were Jøtul AS, Dovre AS and Norsk Kleber AS.
A selection of CFD software solutions exists on the market, some quite complex, more suited for research and then others, less costly and more user-friendly, more targeted for industrial use. Of the latter, only Simcenter FLOEFD included combustion modelling, which was the main reason for choosing this software. Fast gridding, quick convergence and ease-of-use were also important aspects.