Leveraging the Uintah Computational Framework for Commercial Simulation of Industrial Flares

Advanced modeling and simulation software, such as the Uintah Computational Framework (Uintah), has been developed in the US, through significant funding by the Department of Energy Office of Advanced Scientific Computing, but has been underutilized by US industry. We will leverage Uintah for commercial simulation of industrial flares on publicly available HPC facilities, and we will further develop a graphical user interface making this software available to operators and designers to improve combustion efficiency and reduce emissions. How this problem or situation is being addressed - The small business will collaborate with developers of Uintah as well as flare manufacturers, testing companies, and operators to improve the accuracy of flare simulations. The Uintah software will be hardened for efficient simulations of industrial flares. The small business will make the hardened Uintah Computational Framework available to industrial flare operators through a web based graphical user interface hosted by commercial servers accessing commercially available high performance computing facilities in the US. What was done in Phase I? - In phase I, the necessary components of Uintah were installed at a commercial high performance computing provider. The small business, in collaboration with the research institution, simulated operation of two industrial flares, making comparisons with available data and demonstrating accuracy over a time-frame and cost that is commercially feasible. In addition, the small business developed a basic graphical user interface to ease the setup, simulation, and post processing steps. What is planned for Phase II? - In Phase II, the small business will continue work with the research institution, a flare testing services company, an independent software consultant, and an advisory team including an original equipment manufacturer, a petrochemical and energy engineering and construction company, and a petrochemicals producer to expand the use of Uintah to multiple libraries of elevated flares and multipoint ground flares. The libraries will be implemented into the graphical user interface and linked to 2-3 commercial computing facilities. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits - The improved flare simulation capability will provide more accuracy related to combustion efficiency and emissions from flares. The software-as- a-service model for industrial flare simulations will be used to make high performance computing available to designers and users of flares to improve performance and reduce emissions in a more economical fashion than can be achieved through legacy simulation and experimentation alone.