How feasible/convenient is it to model this furnace in OpenFoam ?
 

Hi all,

I have been using Ansys FLUENT to model a steam methane reforming furnace (diagrams attached). But now I plan to use OpenFoam to be able use super-computing facility at my university. I was wondering if someone can give me some idea about the level of customization that would be needed for this model.

Model details:

There is a rectangular furnace (5.5m X 4.5m X 12.5m) with inlets at the top and outlets along side walls at the bottom. Several cylindrical tubes are present inside the furnace with inlets at top and outlets at the bottom. In the furnace methane combustion occurs. A different reaction (methane -- > Hydrogen) takes place inside the tube which uses the heat released by combustion in the furnace. So I would need solvers for combustion (or species transport), turbulence, radiation, reaction modeling etc. The furnace acts as one volume unit while each tube acts as individual volume unit. All these domains are solved simultaneously.

Also, regarding mesh generation, would it be recommended to use fluentMeshToFoam to reuse the mesh I have created using Gambit or should I remesh using snappyHexMesh ?

Thanks,
Ankur

Hello,

Take a look at reactingFoam and fireFoam. You would use fireFoam as reactingFoam doesn't have radiation, but the settings are similar (just disable pyrolisys ).
If you already have a good mesh, use the fluentMeshToFoamto convert.

regards,
olivier

Thanks Olivier. I will explore your suggestions.