A Lattice-Boltzmann CFD study of the hydrodynamics relevant for industrial fermentation processes

Fermentation processes are considered to be essential to decrease our reliance on fossil fuel based products. However, the scale-up from lab-scale to industrial-scale has proven to be difficult. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has the potential to be a tool to optimize the scale-up and to help engineers understand the relevant hydrodynamics...

Design of Artificial Neural Network for predicting the reduction in permeability of porous media as a result of polymer gel injection

Cross-linked polymer gel is widely used in the oil and gas industry to block high permeability conduits and reduce water cut. The complex nature of this fluid, especially regarding flow in porous media, makes its numerical simulation very time-consuming. This study presents an approach to designing an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model...

Euler-Lagrange Simulation of Glycolytic Oscillations using the Lattice Boltzmann Method

The traditional Eulerian view of biomass in bioprocess modelling results in issues when modelling large-scale bioreactors in which heterogeneous conditions are common. As the field increasingly moves from “scale-up” to “scale-down” philosophy, in which such heterogeneities are included from the start of process design, accurate modelling of the...

An analysis of organism lifelines in an industrial bioreactor using Lattice-Boltzmann CFD

Euler-Lagrange CFD simulations, where the biotic phase is represented by computational particles (parcels), provide information on environmental gradients inside bioreactors from the microbial perspective. Such information is highly relevant for reactor scale-down and process optimization. One of the major challenges is the computational...

Equivalent Fluid Modelling of a Honeycomb Acoustic Liner using the Acoustic Porous Medium Formulation

Over the past decades, numerous methods have been used to study acoustic liners through their impedance, of which numerical methods are of particular interest. Despite their advantages, numerical methods are bounded by certain drawbacks. One such drawback stems from the need to accurately discretize the liner geometry, which can lead to large...

An Investigation of Dynamic Stall using a LBM-VLES Approach

Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs) are a very popular source of renewable energy, but these machines are often subject to off-design conditions owing to the unsteady nature of wind. Unsteady aerodynamic conditions have been associated with cyclic loading of turbine blades, which can have hugely detrimental effects on their operational life....