CFD and multi zone modelling of fog formation risk in a naturally ventilated industrial building.

Natural ventilation systems for industrial buildings have traditionally been designed using empirical engineering models, which often require the designer to 'over-engineer' the design to achieve a 'guaranteed' level of ventilation performance. This paper describes an application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and multi-zone thermal and airflow modelling to analyse the effectiveness of natural ventilation in removing moisture from a red mud filtration building used in the alumina industry in Australia. Our modelling work was divided into three stages: estimation of heat and moisture sources; modelling flow patterns and moisture distributions in the existing system; and finally modelling of the flow patterns and fog formation risk in a proposed new system. It is concluded that the CFD and multi-zone modelling approaches can be applied for ventilation design of industrial buildings, but great efforts are needed to collect crucial data such as heat and moisture sources in a realistic building.