Research projects

GexCon R&D participates in various research projects related to industrial process safety and renewable energy. Our expertize is particularly relevant for mitigating the consequences of major industrial accidents.

 

Recent initiatives have focused on hazards associated with emerging technologies for conventional and renewable energy production, including hydrogen safety, biofuels, solar panel production, vapour explosions (rapid phase transitions), production, storage and use of liquefied natural gas (LNG), carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), etc.

 

Publicly funded projects

GexCon R&D is involved in several research projects funded by the European Commission (FP7), the Research Council of Norway (RCN), and the International Energy Agency (IEA).

 

Current research projects include:

  • CO2PipeHaz (FP7): Hazards associated with the release and dispersion of carbon dioxide
  • Flashing liquid releases and dispersion: industry PhD supported by RCN
  • Flame instabilities in industrial scale explosions: industry PhD supported by RCN
  • NORCOWE: Optimization of wind farms: CEER supported by RCN
  • Hydrogen safety: IEA project supported through RCN

Contract research

GexCon provides state-of-the-art contract research related to both advanced software development and laboratory to large-scale explosion experiments.


Current research projects include:

  • The Joint Industry Project "FLACS 2011 and Beyond", supported by Statoil, ExxonMobil, Total and IRSN
  • Fire modelling, with special emphasis on pool and jet fires (supported by Innovation Norway)
  • State-of-the-art risk assessments and consequence modelling in the process industry

The Joint Industry Project (JIP) “FLACS 2011 and beyond” has high focus on enhanced performance through parallel computing, a new solver for incompressible flow, and improved resolution through local grid refinement. Additional targets include improved modelling of various dispersion and explosion phenomena and extensive validation. FLACS is now available to the JIP sponsors in parallel versions, using either MPI or OpenMP.

One of the main ongoing development activities at GexCon R&D is the Joint Industry Project (JIP) “FLACS 2011 and beyond”. The project has high focus on enhanced performance through parallel computing, a new solver for incompressible flow, and improved resolution through local grid refinement. Additional targets include improved modelling of various dispersion and explosion phenomena and extensive validation. FLACS is now available to the JIP sponsors in parallel versions, using either MPI or OpenMP.

DESC is a special version of FLACS for simulating dust explosions in complex geometries. GexCon has ongoing activities on validation and documentation of DESC, and our ambition is to establish additional funding to boost this work. 

Other ongoing R&D efforts at GexCon include the development of special versions of FLACS for wind farm optimization and fire modelling. The various new features, including the boost in performance resulting from the JIP project, will make future versions of FLACS even more versatile and efficient tools for engineers.

Cooperation

GexCon R&D cooperates with many universities and research institutes around the world, including:

  • Central Mining Institute, Katowice
  • Dalhousie University, Halifax
  • Kingston University, London
  • Technical University of Warsaw
  • Texas A&M University
  • FSA, Mannheim
  • INERIS, Paris
  • University College London
  • University of Bergen (UiB)

 

Contact person:

Trygve Skjold: trygve(a)gexcon.com