CARPET 2:
Modeling of dispersed multi-fluid flow in chemical reactors

Objectives:

Develop a theoretical population balance description for the dispersed phases implementing coalescence, break-up and particle phase mixing into the general numerical model (CFD) frame for dynamic simula-tion of 3D turbulent flows with minimum 10 phases.

The work will focus on the description of the dispersed phases interaction applying population balances with the possibility of transmission of mass, heat and momentum between the phases. Theoretical formulations and experimental setup for validation will be discussed.

The numerical model intends to be validated against experimental data on void distribution, particle and bubble size and velocities obtained at our laboratory.

Background:

It is proven that the role of CFD in future design of chemical reactors will increase substantially and that it will help to reduce the experimental efforts required to develop and optimize industrial reactors.

To enable the formulation of reliable closure laws for bubbly flows, the understanding of coalescence, break-up and accumulation of impurities on the bubble surfaces, which is related to micro scale phe-nomena taking place in the vicinity of interfaces, needs to be improved. This doctoral study is a continuation of an ongoing thesis at the department of chemical engineering.

Scope of work:

Formulate and analyze the detailed physics for bubble driven flows. A population balance model should be formulated enabling flow regimes in various chemical systems with different bubble size distributions to be studied by the same numerical framework.

The work will end up in a numerical description of bubble and particle size distribu-tions, a population balance, implemented into a fluid flow solver.

PhD student:

Carlos Dorao

Affiliation:

NTNU, Department of Chemical Engineering.

Supervisors:

Hallvard F. Svendsen in collaboration with Hugo A. Jakobsen, Knut Bech, Leif R. Hellevik, Paal Skjetne, John Morud , and Karsten Sørli.