Simulation of coalescence, break-up and mass transfer in a gas–liquid stirred tank with CQMOM

•A multivariate population balance is used to model gas–liquid stirred tanks.•Bubble coalescence, break up and mass transfer are considered with CQMOM.•CQMOM is implemented and validated in Fluent for the first time.•Predictions for mean bubble size are in good agreements with experiments.•Predictio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Chemical engineering journal (Lausanne, Switzerland : 1996) Switzerland : 1996), 2013-07, Vol.228, p.1182-1194
Main Authors: Petitti, Miriam, Vanni, Marco, Marchisio, Daniele L., Buffo, Antonio, Podenzani, Fabrizio
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Break-up
CFD
chemical engineering
Coalescence
Computational fluid dynamics
Computer simulation
Conditional quadrature method of moments
Gas–liquid
Mass transfer
Mathematical models
Multi-fluid model
Multiphase flow
oxygen
Population balance
Population balance models
prediction
Quadrature-based moment method
Rushton turbines
Stirred tank
Tanks
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Summary:•A multivariate population balance is used to model gas–liquid stirred tanks.•Bubble coalescence, break up and mass transfer are considered with CQMOM.•CQMOM is implemented and validated in Fluent for the first time.•Predictions for mean bubble size are in good agreements with experiments.•Predictions for mass transfer are in good agreement with experiments. In this work oxygen mass transfer in a turbulent air–water stirred tank is investigated. A multivariate population balance model is coupled with the Eulerian multi-fluid approach to describe the spatial and temporal evolution of the bubble size and composition distributions. For the numerical solution of the population balance model the conditional quadrature method of moments is employed and implemented through user-defined scalars and functions in the computational fluid dynamics code ANSYS/Fluent 12. The approach is validated by comparing model predictions with experiments (from the literature) conducted in an air–water stirred tank equipped with a Rushton turbine and a porous sparger. First predictions are compared with the experimentally measured mean Sauter diameter. The comparison highlights that the modeling approach is capable of predicting the main feature of the system. Then oxygen mass transfer is simulated and predictions for the oxygen accumulation in water are validated against experiments. Also for this comparison good agreement is found.
ISSN:1385-8947
1873-3212
DOI:10.1016/j.cej.2013.05.047