Author: Will English

OpenFOAM: pimpleFoam w HEAT TRANSFER -1

Case: clamp_04 Solver: pimpleFoam -> clampPimpleFoam This post is the first of two that a record of how to modify the pimpleFoam solver of OpenFOAM to include heat transfer when there is: a porous region, two phases (gas and solid = porous region), and a heat source within the solid region. In this post, a…
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REGEN AG PODCAST EP 77: RICK CLARK

My notes say that there wasn’t a lot of practical info in this episode. Which is funny, because a quick search of Rick and a lot of the details of how to do what he does pop up. For example, this, or this. And he does it on some serious acreage. 7000, at least. What…
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REGEN AG PODCAST EP 76: TIM PARTON

A short review, this one. Not because Tim didn’t have anything to say, but more because there wasn’t too much new and/ or relevant to sugar beet. The best insights were into what it is like to manage a regenerative farm: the number of field passes on any one field may not decrease, but instead…
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REGEN AG PODCAST EP 75: JAMES JOHNSON.

The biggest question that hung in the air at the end of this episode was, who is this guy? Mr. Johnson’s story was as compelling as all the others on the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast, but it was not possible to shake the feeling that the scale on which he was applying his regenerative approach was…
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OpenFOAM – FIFTH ATTEMPT. AIR FLOW THROUGH A SUGAR BEET CLAMP w TRANSIENT SOLVER

A long time ago (2021-02-17), I wrote that I had a feeling there was something wrong with my CFD model of a sugar beet clamp – the rates of air flow seemed a bit low when compared to a few roughly similar cases. It turns out, there was something wrong with it. The viscosity of…
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REGEN AG PODCAST EP 74: DALE STRICKLER

I’ve jumped over episode 73: John Fagan of HRI Labs, Iowa. Of course it was interesting, but there wasn’t much there for sugar beet in Sweden. Dale Strickler’s Books. I don’t think that it came from this podcast but from one of the Soil Sense episodes, but the guest said “when your car breaks down…
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REGEN AG PODCAST EP 72: NICOLE MASTERS

Another great guest. Another book. Another interesting ‘new’ topic. Nicole is a Kiwi, so that is already endearing. Throw on top of this her outlook on things and her clear way of discussing it, and her knowledge (again largely from a mix of experience and knowing the science) and you’ve got another classic RegenAg Podcast.…
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OpenFOAM – FIFTH ATTEMPT. AIR FLOW THROUGH A VENTILATED SUGAR BEET CLAMP

It’s a very idealised version of a clamp, but it feels pretty OK. The clamp is 8m wide, 2.4m high, and the cross section is 3m broad. The ventilation pipe is 20cm in diameter, and 5.5m long, from x = 0. There are 12 holes in the pipe, each 6cm in diameter and centered at…
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REGEN AG PODCAST EP 71: HARRIET MELLA (plus note on ep 68-70)

Episodes 68, 69 and 70 were, of course, all interesting and worth the listen, but I just didn’t get any great take-aways from them that felt would be appilcable to sugar beets in Sweden in the near future. Some general things that were nice hear though: Steven Bierlink (ep 70) mentioned that he is no…
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Brendan Rocky. Keynote at Soil Heath Workshop, Utah Conservation Districts.

The presentation is on YouTube. Brendan is a farmer. That’s the full extent of how he introduces himself. It is also why I like listening to him – he’s doing this stuff, with his own skin in the game. The punchline of Brendan’s presentation is that he is replacing a system dominated by death with…
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