CFD Driven Optimization of Flue Gas Slide Valve and Variable Orifice Valve Layout

with Nicola Dessalvi, Remosa Valves

The use of Variable Orifice Valves (VOV) downstream the Double Disc Slide Valve (SV) is constantly increasing due to attractive performance of such devices in terms of rangeability of the process at different flowrates. A battery composed by two VOVs is typically installed downstream the Flue Gas Slide Valve, although the actual number will be function of the maximum pressure drop.

Remosa developed a proprietary analytical calculation model which is able to predict the pressure drop at the different process conditions with high accuracy, and to identify the optimal design parameters. However, it is sometimes requested to reach a deeper understanding of the flow, due to pratical constraints in the field: e.g small distance between the VOS and the SV, elbows and diameter transition immediately upstream or downstream the valves.

In such conditions, a Computational Flow Dynamics (CFD) study is highly recommended to analyze the actual flow pattern. Remosa developed an high performance CFD parametric framework based on the Immersed Boundaries Method, which is able to simulate and compare different solutions in a short time, allowing to gain a wider picture of the current process.