Case Study: CaptiveAire Systems improves kitchen humidity evacuation with Hexagon's CFD solution

Using CFD to measure humidity evacuation efficiency for a kitchen exhaust hood system

CaptiveAire Systems, the largest commercial kitchen ventilation company in North America, sought to evaluate the effectiveness of its new exhaust hood system in evacuating humidity from a kitchen space. The challenge was to ensure the system could remove moisture introduced by its own components while maintaining staff comfort and containing cooking effluent. For this analysis, CaptiveAire turned to vendor Hexagon and utilized its scSTREAM CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software to simulate and measure air migration.

Hexagon's scSTREAM software enabled CaptiveAire to run 12 simulation cases, which provided clear visualizations and quantitative data on airflow, temperature, and humidity. The results verified that over 90% of the introduced moisture was captured by the exhaust system. Furthermore, the analysis identified an optimal air conditioning setting that improved containment, reduced energy usage, and minimized noise. Hexagon's solution provided critical insights that confirmed the hood's performance and will guide CaptiveAire's future product development.

CaptiveAire Systems

Bill Griffin

VP of Engineering