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Courtesy of the Donaldson Company, Inc.Donaldson Company, a world-leading supplier of filtration systems, recently used MixSim and FLUENT to successfully redesign the mixing tank used in their manufacturing process. Using CFD modeling, hardware redesign costs were only $2000, substantial savings over the $50,000, or more, design costs associated with the alternate options under consideration. In Donaldson's mixing process, multiple impellers are used to achieve a uniform suspension. The Corporate Technology Group determined that the existing equipment didn't work well, due to inadequate mixing. The big unknown was what to do about it. One of the substantial benefits of modeling was that it could provide information on what was happening before money was committed for rework. Using CFD, different configurations and different operating conditions could be tried, before the company committed to any modifications to the equipment. In addition to saving on hardware costs associated with the redesign, modeling shortened the time and cost associated with testing alternate ideas. A single experimental test, including the run and subsequent analysis, costs Donaldson Company about $20,000. The final tank design, determined through modeling, has performed successfully on the first test. By avoiding extensive testing, the modeling work produced major cost and time savings. "Our best guess is that the modeling work saved $48,000. It's possible that it saved as much as $300,000 - and the project!"  Donaldson Company improved the top to bottom mixing and uniform suspension in their mixer by modifying the shaft and impeller selection. MixSim and FLUENT allowed the project engineers to minimize the time and expense of redesign and retesting. |
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