Canonsburg-based Ansys announced Monday it will be part of a NASA-backed research project looking into alternative, sustainable aircraft fuel.
Ansys’s simulation solutions will serve as a way to validate research led by the University of Central Florida (UCF) on using liquid ammonia as an alternate fuel source for aircraft, UCF will implement Ansys’ simulation to analyze, test, and qualify ammonia as an alternate fuel to power zero-carbon jet engines.
“We want to create a scalable solution for cleaner aviation, and with Ansys’ cooperation, we will get there faster,” said Jay Kapat, the lead investigator of the project and an engineering professor at UCF and head of the Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research at UCF. “We would not be able to authenticate the use of liquid ammonia as a reliable and alternate fuel without the sophistication and capability of Ansys’ fluids simulation tools.”
UCF will integrate Ansys’ chemical kinetics and computational fluid dynamics simulation tools to simulate complex chemical reaction systems surrounding ammonia. The tools, Ansys Chemkin-Pro and Ansys Fluent, will simulate the vaporization of liquid ammonia inside heat exchange tubes, heat transfer, and the combustion of ammonia and hydrogen in the air. The goal, researchers said, is to use the ammonia as a main hydrogen carrier by inducing chemical catalysis that will leverage ammonia’s hydrogen components and only release safe emissions.
“Simulation is reshaping a cleaner future in many industries, and today we applaud its continued impact on aviation with this exciting new project made possible by UCF and NASA. Simulation enables companies to save resources, energy, and emissions before products are ever built; and build more energy-efficient products and processes that have far-reaching sustainability impacts,” said Prith Banerjee, chief technology officer at Ansys and executive sponsor of Ansys’ Academic and Sustainability Programs. “Through simulation, Ansys provides the predictive certainty to realize our customers’ vision for a sustainable future and model interactions that we otherwise could not analyze, such as chemical reactions. We look forward to playing a role in developing groundbreaking sustainable aviation fuel options.”