TECHNOLOGY Visualization Software

Fuel Tech began using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation in its core product technology in 1987. At that time our major development effort was to bring advanced simulation out of research and into the everyday design environment. To this analysis effort, advances in visualization were clearly needed to guide decision-making and quickly produce meaningful results.

In 1994, Fuel Tech collaborated with Argonne National Laboratory to implement virtual reality and supercomputing techniques to solve practical engineering problems. Fuel Tech provided expertise in CFD techniques for industrial applications. Argonne applied the latest visualization and computational methods. The result was Fuel Tech’s first application for modeling and visualizing spray injection inside a boiler environment.

Fuel Tech undertook a major upgrade of the code in 1998 and 1999 for its daily internal use. By this time it was possible to purchase in-house compute hardware to power a visualization environment where Fuel Tech engineers could review designs and present them to customers. With each year that followed, advances in compute power enabled a wider propagation of visualization software in both the engineering and sales cycles.

Today, Fuel Tech uses proprietary visualization software on desktop PCs and on laptops powered by consumer-level graphics cards and the technology is dispersed throughout the Company. The ability to show our engineering designs in an immersive, interactive way has brought extensive benefits. Our engineers recognize the information contained in their simulation datasets more rapidly and with greater precision. Group visualization sessions in our stereovision projection laboratory in Batavia, Illinois allow for enhanced design creativity and further risk management. Our designers and sales personnel can now communicate visually what they have discovered to customers more easily and generate more complete understanding of our recommendations. Customer engagement and feedback on what they see in the virtual environment enriches the design process and further increases quality.

The progression of Fuel Tech’s proprietary software development is depicted below:

	Fuel Tech’s first visualization application.
	Addition of supercomputing power to visualize combustion flows.
	First major upgrade in 1998 to become the in-house Fuel Tech design tool.
	Visualization software has become a daily tool for Fuel Tech process design.

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