ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

All praise to Allah s.w.t for His mercy and providence, this project was able to be
completed from the beginning, simulation phases until the submission of this thesis. I am very
pleased to express my gratitude to my faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi
MARA for giving 0e the opportunity to conduct my Final Year Project entitled, Effect of
Exhaust Stack Design with Pollutant Dispersion.

I would like to express my sincere utmost appreciation to my supervisor, Dr. Mohd

Faizal Bin Mohamad for his non-stop guidance, relentless supervision, patience and
encouragement throughout the completion of this project despite being very occupied with
other commitments. In fact, his presence alone was a great encouragement to me to give my
all for this project. Not to forget, a big appreciation from me to everyone who were involved
directly or indirectly; especially colleagues for their support and concern until this thesis has
been accomplished and completed.

Next, most importantly, my special acknowledgement is for my parents who have

always been supporting me not only in terms of motivation and finance but also for their
constructive criticisms and perspectives regarding this project.

Finally, I hope that this thesis could give further information about the roughness
elements towards the effect on the performance and flow mixture at the exhaust stack of power
plant. Therefore, the improvement of exhaust stack design can be done properly to building
consist exhaust.
 ABSTRACT

The plume disperses around a unit building at power plant with an exhaust stack emission is
most likely affect the safety and health of worker for maintenance works. This study intends to
evaluate the effect of exhaust stack designs on the pollutant dispersion around the power plant.
Simulations are performed using open source software OpenFOAM by means of Reynolds-
averaged Navier Stokes with standard k-ε closure model. The stack is design with varied
heights from the roof top, H and distances from the leeward façade of the building, D. The
boundary condition at the inlet of domain is based on atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) flow
and zero pressure gradient on the outlet of domain. The results of flow patterns were analysed
and discussed to verify the best design of exhaust stack on building at power plant.
 CONTENTS PAGE
DECLARATION i
PAGE TITLE iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iv
ABSTRACT v
TABLE OF CONTENTS vi
LIST OF TABLES ix
LIST OF FIGURES x
LIST OF xii
ABBREVIATIONS

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of Study 1
1.2 Problem Statement 3
1.3 Aim 3
1.4 Objectives 3
1.5 Expected Results 3
1.6 Scope of Work 4
1.7 Significance of Study 4

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background of Study

Referring to the Department of Environment (DOE), any building that conducts

stack emission need to be monitored with the guidelines issued by DOE. The building
has centrifugal compressor units. The units are driven by gas turbine engines model.
During operation, there are certain pollutants that are emitted into the environment. The
emission from stack is required to be monitored in order to ensure compliance to the
limit set for [1]. Other than that, it is to ensure that activities at compressor station does
not cause any adverse impact on the quality of the surrounding environment. The plume
disperse contains solid particles, dark smoke, SO2, NO2, CO, CO2, O2, Metals and VOC.

Figure 2.1: Exhaust stack at building

To have good air quality of environment at the building, many researchers had
studied the pollutant dispersion with the wind flow at the building. The pollution
 dispersion depends on the wind flow structure. When building contains exhaust or vent
stack emits pollutions, it will create poor air quality that can give hazard to human
health who works around that building area. Prediction of plume dispersion near
buildings is very important for the design of exhaust vents and air intakes to avoid
adverse air quality impacts.

Air pollution near and around buildings is an important environmental problem.

However, it is difficult to predict pollutant dispersions with certainty because of the
complexity of the interaction between atmospheric flow and flow around buildings. A
micro-scale computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique has been used as a powerful
tool for investigating such complex interactions, as reviewed in several Studies [2]. The
paper shows that increasing the stack height has an effect similar to that obtained by
increasing the momentum ratio, but with some differences. (M. Lateb, C. Masson, T.
Stathopoulos and C. Bédard, 2011)

1.2. Problem Statement

This project is based on the design from PETRONAS Gas Segamat Compressor Station.
The station has two units of building consist of gas generator-compressor package. The
turbine operates 24 hours continuously and emit pollutant to the surrounding at the
exhaust stack of turbine. The exhaust stack of power turbine design must meet the
requirement of Department of Environment (DOE) for the level of pollutant emitted
from the exhaust stack.

i. Pollutant emitted from power turbine exhaust stack hazardous to the worker at the
building.

1.3. Objectives

The followings are the objectives of this study:

i. To evaluate the distribution of mean velocity with exhaust emission.

ii. To investigate the effect of the exhaust stack design on pollutant dispersion.
 1.4. Expected Results

The results expected from this study include:

i. Completed 3D CAD model of designed building structures.

ii. Apply boundary condition and mesh condition established.
iii. Able to simulate the distribution of pollutant based on design of exhaust stack by
using OpenFOAM software.
iv. Understanding and compare the result simulation of the effect of exhaust stack
design with pollutant dispersion via nine cases.

1.5. Scope of Work

This project is limited to the following scope:

i. The study covers the simulation using OpenFOAM Software in 3D model to obtain
the flow of pollutant distribution from nine cases.
ii. Simulates and analyses Pollutant dispersion from nine cases via OpenFOAM.

Building arrangement for schematic diagram is as shown:

 Figure 1.6: Computational Domain

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction
The literature review for this study is the relation between the previous research with the
study of “Effect of exhaust stack design with pollutant dispersion”. The information from
past research will be understood and studied the fundamental of theory used from journals,
articles, Internet and previous research papers.

2.2 Effect of Exhaust Stack Design

The study conducts on cubic isolated building to simply flow field and certain parameters
and minimize turbulent. In this study, the parameters generally studied are wind direction,
wind speed, the influence of exhaust stack design at building on flow and diffusion fields.

The minimum stack height is necessary to keep the stack outlet free of upstream wake
effects. Stack height and the distance between pollutant exhaust and building are the
parameters of interest for this study. Several cases using various stack heights, stack
locations and wind directions were also studied. Within the same context, it is also to
determine laboratory exhaust stack height to avoid re-entry of exhaust and possible air
quality problems.

2.3 Pollutant Dispersion

CFD allows for easier control of each parameter and can be a powerful tool for parametric
analysis of the factors influencing flow and dispersion processes [3]. Stack discharge was
a neutrally buoyant, passive gas without thermal effects. The pollutant exhaust momentum,
M, which is the ratio between the exhaust velocity (Ve) and the mean wind speed at the
building height (UH),

M = Ve /UH

2.4 Turbulence Model

CFD consists of many types of turbulence model and the most used is Reynolds averaged
Navier-Stokes equation (RANS) and Large-Eddy simulation (LES) [4]. By using RANS,
the models that will be used is Renormalization-group (RNG). The RNG model remained
the best approach for evaluating concentrations with low average errors [5]. The average
errors for the numerical concentrations as compared to the experimental measurements
indicate that the RNG turbulence model reproduced better concentration for stack heights
[6]. The well-established airflow pattern around a building induces a horseshoe vortex
system at the ground level of a building's upwind facade. This phenomenon seems to be
better represented by the RNG turbulence model, as compared to the SKE and RLZ models,
each of which displays a very small vortex [7]. RNG turbulence model performed best for
the higher stack height and both momentum ratios.

2.5 Wind Flow Pattern

Pollutants may enter or escape the separation cavity by convection. The mean streamlines
for flow about a single building form a complex flow geometry. The flow approaching the
obstacle separates from the surface at a distance upwind of the building. The measurements
of velocity around a cubic model without vent were used for validation of the prediction
accuracy of velocity field by CFD (flow I). Then, the measurements were used for the
comparison in the concentration field with vent emission (Flow II) [5].
 Figure 7.5.1: The air flow around building

2.6 Geometric Model

For the isolated building must be in computational domain with boundary condition
which the environment of domain is eliminated. The horizontal from the top roof must
be at least 5H from the buildings while the outlet flow must be more than 15H from
the behind of the buildings in order to get flow development, where H is the height of
the buildings [3].

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

This study is about the flow of project from the start until the end stages. It focused on
the method of previous study used, data collection and method to run the software. A
process flow was presented by using flowchart for a clear view of activity scheduling.
The flowchart was prepared to ensure this study can be conducted and run smoothly
according the plan.

Figure 3.1: Flow chart of methodology

3.2 Identification of Project Tittle and Project Background

The title of the project needs to be confirmed with the supervisor. Afterward, the student
is required to study about project background. It is necessary for the student to identify
the current situation of conventional method to simulate the pollutant dispersion for the
project background. Therefore, by using CFD with OpenFOAM suggested by the
supervisor to simulate the study to get expected results.

3.3 Computational geometry, domain and grid

The dimension of cubic isolated building is is W x D x H = 15m x 15m x 15m and the
dimension of domain is W x D x H = 315m x 165m x 90m in full scale. The grid is
 fairly coarse near the boundaries of the domain, with cells concentrated near the stack
and the building walls. A symmetry condition is imposed for all (i.e., top and lateral)
sides of the domain.

3.4 Boundary Condition

At the top and lateral boundaries, a symmetry boundary condition is imposed. The
bottom boundary as well as the building and stack surfaces is defined as no-slip walls
[8]. A velocity inlet is defined at the top face of the stack, with an assumed turbulence
intensity of 10%. For the inlet of domain, the boundary condition is based on wind
velocity. Zero static pressure is applied at the outlet of domain.

3.5 Meshing Detail

The meshing options will help to get converged results in order to get accurate and
better result. Three types of meshing are coarse, fine and medium grids which are used
for the solution [9]. The results obtained will determine the difference of result from
the medium and fine grids. The method for meshing is hex dominant method and will
be used and resulting in high skewness of mesh compared to tetrahedrons method.

CHAPTER IV

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Validation