Yi (Lewis) Lu

Engineering Consultant
Process and Greenhouse
Melbourne

Professional Background

Lewis completed his Master of Chemical Engineering at the University of Melbourne. Lewis is an experienced consulting engineer whose primary focuses are Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling, bench-scale chemical testing, process engineering modelling, and data analytics. Lewis is passionate about data-driven approaches to understanding equipment and plant performance.

Areas of Expertise

• Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling
• Data analysis and numerical methods
• Laboratory and bench scale experimental set up and operation
• Conducting laboratory experiments, including CFD and Thermodynamic modelling

Relevant Project Experience

PROJECT | CFD Model of a telecommunication shelter

• Implemented meteorological conditions and solar radiation of the modelled site into dynamic boundary conditions of the CFD model via customised code.
• The modelling outcomes helped client understanding temperature distribution of the internal under various meteorological conditions.

PROJECT | CFD Model of venturi flow meter

• The goal of this project was to design a venturi air flow meter for a coal-to-natural gas boiler conversion.
• Different venturi geometries were screened with CFD, and the performance curve of the optimal design was obtained with CFD case studies.
• After the venturi flow meters were commissioned, conducted pitot traverses onsite to calibrate the actual performance curves.

PROJECT | CFD Model of a regenerative thermal oxidiser

• The model helped client understanding the thermal performance of the full-size thermal oxidiser in early stage of front-end engineering design.
• An initial model was developed and calibrated against pilot plant data to obtain empirical correlations, then applied onto modelling of a full-size equipment.
• Dynamics of flow cycling in the full-size equipment was simulated via customised code.

PROJECT | Extraction of oil and valuable metals from an oil shale

• Designed and conducted bench-scale testings of oil and metal extraction experiments.
• Carried out risk assessments of experiments.
• Operated a scale-up pilot plant to demonstrate feasibility of shale oil extraction.

PROJECT | Testing of thermal properties of liquid samples for various clients.

• Measured thermal conductivity and specific heat of highly viscous liquid samples.
• Measured freezing point depression of an electrolyte solution.
• Carried out risk assessments of tasks.

Data analytics of various projects

• Used data analytics to gain insights on equipment and plant performance in various projects, such as boiler combustion tuning, investigating degradation of turbine performance, loss of output in a solar farm due to cloud coverage, and HRSG thermal efficiency optimisation.
• Integration of different data sources, such as DCS, EuFlame, and MCDA.
• Developed a pipeline of Python + MySQL + MongoDb for data clean-up, ingestion, dynamic query, computing, and visualisation.

Qualifications

• Bachelor of Science (Chemical Engineering) - University of Texas at Austin, 2017
• Master of Chemical Engineering - University of Melbourne, 2019