Reproduction of Thermal Plume above Commercial Cooking Gas Stove using CFD Analysis

Abstract

In commercial kitchens, the working environment of cooks deteriorates because of the generation of large amounts of heat and vapor. Ventilation is required to improve the environment, and the accompanying increase in air-conditioning energy becomes an issue. Therefore, a proper ventilation design is required to reduce the risk of contaminated air, thereby deteriorating the indoor environment. When planning ventilation and air conditioning for commercial kitchens, the heat generated by cooking products can be efficiently exhausted to reduce the air conditioning load and maintain good air quality in the workspace. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was used to predict the air conditioning load and air quality. It is important to accurately evaluate the heat generated from the cooking equipment and the exhaust collection performance of cooking products. At that time, the accuracy of reproducing the thermal updraft is important, but when the capture efficiency is predicted using the simple gradient diffusion hypothesis model, which is widely used for indoor airflow analysis, the capture efficiency is excess owing to insufficient diffusion. Several studies on the thermal plume on gas stoves have been conducted thus far[1]–[4], and previous studies have clarified that there is a problem in the reproducibility of the production term