HVAC
INDUSTRIAL AIR
DESTRATIFIER
Removing thermal stratification
from industrial sheds
CLIENT
Manufacturer of industrial ventilation and air-mixing systems for production buildings
CHALLENGE
Establish, by simulation, how well an Eliturbo destratification fan actually mixes the air in a heated shed
RESULT
Stratification substantially reduced, temperature far more uniform, and guidance on where to place the units
01
CHALLENGE
The most common problem in a heated industrial shed is thermal stratification. Air warmed by unit heaters or industrial HVAC rises and collects under the roof, which leaves a large temperature difference between floor and ceiling: hot air doing nothing overhead, cooler air where people are working.
The consequences are real — poor thermal comfort at the workstations, significant wasted energy, and higher heating costs for the building.
Destratification fans exist to counter exactly this, by stirring the air and redistributing the heat. The client asked us to simulate the Eliturbo unit and establish how effective it really is at improving air distribution in a shed.
02
SOLUTION
We built a three-dimensional CFD model of the shed and of the fan, which gave us the air flow field, the velocity distribution and the heat exchange between the internal air and the surfaces of the building.
The fluid domain was split in two: a stationary zone for the shed itself and a rotating zone containing the Eliturbo rotor. It was discretised with a mesh of roughly four million elements, fine enough to capture both the aerodynamics of the rotor and the ventilation and mixing in the building.
The analysis ran in three stages: the fan turning at 700 rpm in a space with no heat sources; the same case with an industrial unit heater added; and finally a transient simulation following how the temperature distribution evolves in time. That last one is what shows the field becoming progressively uniform and the floor-to-ceiling difference closing.
03
RESULTS
The simulations showed the Eliturbo to be highly effective at improving ventilation and air distribution in industrial sheds: a substantial reduction in thermal stratification, a more uniform temperature through the space, and better mixing of warm and cool air.
Which translates into better thermal comfort for the people working there, less energy wasted, and heating systems that work more efficiently.
The CFD also gave the client something the product datasheet cannot: guidance on the optimal placement of the units, and so a way to design more efficient ventilation for a given building.
