FLUENT and EPA Model Environmental Dispersion

Fluent and the National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL) of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiated a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) in May. Under the CRADA, Fluent and NERL will investigate the use of CFD for modeling dispersion of air pollutants in human exposure microenvironments.

There is an ever-growing need for reliable tools that can assess human exposure to environmental pollutants. In recent years, CFD modeling has emerged as a promising technology for such assessment. Already in use by early-adopters, CFD has the potential to yield more accurate solutions than other methodologies. Based on fundamental physics, CFD can elucidate the effects of detailed three-dimensional geometry and local environmental conditions.

The CRADA seeks to make CFD a "proven and applied" tool through development of validated examples, customized software tools, and best-practice methodologies that will allow environmental scientists to use CFD with greater ease and obtain better, more reliable, predictions. It is expected that the work under this CRADA will help federal, state, and local governments to understand the reliability and the benefit of CFD as a methodology for assessment. Finally, the work under this CRADA will result in identification of research topics and/or future software development that should be pursued in order to extend the state of the art in CFD modeling to environmental exposure applications.

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