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27
Big
in Japan
Reproduced in English
from an original Japanese interview conducted by Shuichi Ogawa for
CDaJ
The first in a series of articles that explores how CD-adapco’s software is used in some of Japan’s most successful companies.
Mitsubishi
Chemical Corporation is one of Japan’s leading diversified chemicals
companies and is a long time investor in CFD research, particularly
in the complex fields of two-phase flow and chemical reaction.
The
use of CFD at Mitsubishi has spread rapidly since the early nineties.
Starting from a single installation at the Mitsubishi Research Institute
in Yokohama, CFD is now used in Mitsubishi plants across the whole
of Japan, including Kajima, Yokkaichi, Mizushima and Kurosaki.
“We
quickly realized, that to accurately handle the diverse issues that
arise at each particular location, it is more effective to implement
CFD at every plant that has analytical needs”, says Hiroaki Nagai,
an Engineer in Mitsubishi’s Computer Aided Modeling and Simulation
Lab in Kurosaki. “In the beginning, CFD was used largely for trouble-shooting
within the Kurosaki Plant, but awareness in the field eventually
grew to the point where implementation expanded to such areas as
preliminary inspections prior to plant construction, and our license
usage rapidly increased.”
More than half of the analysis
conducted at the Kurosaki Plant is focused on tank stirring, with
some 70-80% concerning multiphase analysis. In simulating these
problems Mitsubishi engineers employ Lagrangian, Eulerian or free-surface
modeling, each method being used in about a third of cases. Since
no 'off-the-shelf' empirical data is available for many of Mitsubishi's
chemical reactions (particularly those to do with polymerization),
the Kurosaki group maintains a process and design lab that is equipped
with the reaction analysis technology required for determining reaction
speed from experiments and operation data. In order to derive reaction
parameters for the CFD model, testing samples are actually mixed
in a beaker and the test data processed analytically, often reducing
the many reactions down to the few most important. Reaction parameters
are then integrated into STAR-CD using user subroutines.
Mitsubishi
originally adopted STAR-CD in Kurosaki because of the strength of
its meshing generation process and its ability to construct unstructured
meshes quickly and easily. "I like the ease with which models
can be created and, should any occur,
it is also easy to correct
problems with the mesh quality", says
Mitsubishi Engineer
Masaru Futagawa. Through many years of
usage they have also
come to depend on the strength and
robustness of its solver:
"Compared to other software,
convergence is superior",
says Nagai. "In a word, the
robustness of the software
is amazing and with the powerful
user subroutines, we are able
to perform a wide range of
complex analyses."
In
addition to tank stirring simulations, Mitsubishi's CFD Engineers
are regularly called upon to conduct other types of CFD simulation
in support of plant activities. Recently they have been involved
in modeling smoke dispersion in the plant, and an analysis of a
wastewater purification tank.
The team at Kurosaki has also successfully completed extensive CFD analyses of a granulation tower at the plant, a device that forms powder from molten droplets of liquid as they fall into a plume of cold air."The Lagrangian two-phase flow function was used to the fullest extent in this analysis, providing extremely interesting results", says Nagai.
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