Dr. Hosangadi is a vice-president and founding member of CRAFT Tech; a small business specializing in the development of high-fidelity CFD tools.  He is a key developer of the multi-element, unstructured code, CRUNCH CFD^® and has lead the development team for this flagship product of CRAFT Tech (https://crunch.craft-tech.com/).  For the past 20 years he has been actively involved in the development of CFD models for complex flows, specializing in combustion and multi-phase flows for a wide range of applications including liquid rocket systems, air-breathing propulsion, and high energy turbomachinery.

Much of his recent work has involved the development of numerical models for combustion and phase change in cryogenic and other non-ideal fluids, including supercritical CO₂, operating near their critical point.  Dr. Hosangadi has also worked extensively in providing design support for high-energy, industrial pump systems and has co-authored a chapter on “CFD Analysis of Flow and Performance” for the Pump Handbook.  Dr Hosangadi has received three Space Achievement/Act Awards from NASA for the development of software related to cryogenic fluid analysis for liquid rocket engine. He also has a patent for an axial flow conditioning device for mitigating instabilities in fluid test loops.

Abstract

ComputationallyEfficient High-Fidelity Modeling Framework for Design Support of Oxy-Combustors in Direct-Fired sCO₂ Cycles

This presentation will focus on technical issues and simulation challenges in modeling sCO2 oxy-combustors for direct fired cycles.  These combustors operate at high pressures (~300 bar) with large amounts of CO₂ recycled as diluent to achieve a low exit temperature (~1150K).  Thus, there is a large design space for splitting the CO2 between the injector and chamber wall for cooling.  These design parameters have a direct impact on combustor performance since oxygen concentration correlates with flame temperature and impacts CO produced which can reduce combustor performance. Furthermore, pipeline natural gas has significant amount of nitrogen (~1.6%) and can result in NO_x generation.  The modeling framework would need to address unique challenges in developing accurate models for issues including:  a) chemical kinetics and turbulence-chemistry interactions that are currently not well characterized in this regime, b) an efficient numerical framework that integrates kinetic models with large number of species (including NO_x/SO_x contaminants), and c) real fluid thermodynamic properties.  A comprehensive computationally efficient framework for high-fidelity design support is demonstrated on a conceptual oxy-combustor and the impact of various physics issues on flame stability and combustor performance identified.