Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD) of microreactors
Presented by Under the Guidance of
B. Brahmaiah
Prof. Sanjay [Link]
(Roll No.08302002)
Department of Chemical Engineering
IIT Bombay, Mumbai-400076
Outline
• Introduction to CFD
• Introduction to Microreactors
• Flow patterns in Microreactors
• CFD Application for Liquid-liquid slug flow reactors
• CFD of Microburners.
• Mixing analysis in microreactors using CFD.
What is CFD?
• Uses numerical methods and algorithms
Methodology:
• Geometry of the problem
• Physical modeling
• Boundary conditions
• Discretization and simulation
• Analysis of results
Adeosum et al., 2005
What are microreactors?
• few centimeters long and 10-100µm in diameter.
• Gives high surface to volume ratios.
• On-site/on-demand production.
• Safety.
• portability
Holger Löwer et al., 2002
Flow patterns in Microreactors
Liquid-liquid
• Slug flow
• Parallel flow
Gas-liquid
• Film flow
• Bubbly flow
• Taylor flow
• Churn flow
• Annular flow
Kreutzer et al., 2005
Liquid-Liquid slug flow microreactor
CFD MODEL
∇.u=0
ut u u.u p 0
C11
u1.C11 D11C 11,
t
C12
u 2.C12 D12C12,
t
Cik
u.Cik .( DikCik ) rik
t
Kashid et al., 2007
…continued
Boundary conditions and simulation
• Discretization
Implicit Euler --- time
Finite element--- spatial domain
• No slip boundary condition at wall
•
u1 u 2 C11 C12
1 2 D11 D12
n1 n2 n1 n2
Dˆ Cˆ .n 0
• Equidistant time step for all the simulations except for mass transfer
calculations
…continued
Results
• High viscosity fluid takes more time to achieve steady state.
• Velocity profile is parabolic.
Kashid et al., 2007
CFD of microburners
• Micro burners are powerful tool for portable production of energy.
• Lower combustion temperatures can be achieved.
• CFD is used to study the interplay of kinetics, transport in flame
stability, combustion characteristics of microburners.
…continued
Model, boundary conditions and simulation
• The 2-D continuity, momentum, energy and species conservative
equations are solved.
• Finite difference method is used for discretization.
• Steady state simulations are performed using Fluent 6.0.
Norton et al., 2003
…continued
results
• There are three regions in the combustor.
• preheating zone
• Combustion zone
• Cooling zone
• Low thermal conductivities shifts the flame location downward
causing blowout.
• High conductivities leads to heat losses, resulting non localized
reaction.
…continued
Effect of flow velocity
• At high inlet velocities, blowout
occurs.
• Very low velocities results in extinction
Norton et al., 2003
Mixing characterization
• Mixing occurs mostly by molecular diffusion due to low
Reynolds number laminar flow.
• RTD and SMFD (Species mass fraction distribution) are used for
mixing characterization.
• Different geometries are considered for analysis.
• In SMFD, the outlet mass fraction of species is measured
Adeosum et al., 2005
…continued
• Variance, coefficient of variance are used to measure the spread
of distribution.
• Continuity, momentum balance, species balance equations are
solved.
• Mass fraction of species at the outlet is used for SMFD.
• Concentration of water (tracer) at different times is measured
from simulation.
summary
Micro scale reactors have potential advantages over conventional
reactors.
CFD helps to solve the conservation equations.
CFD is being used to better understand the microreactor flows and to
improve the design ways.
References
Adeosun, J.T. and Adeniyi Lawal., 2005, “Mass transfer enhancement in microchannel reactors by reorientation of
fluid interfaces and stretching”, Sensors and Actuators B, 110, 101-111.
Nobuki Aoki, Shinji Hasebe and Kazuhiro mae, 2004, “Mixing in microreactors: effectiveness of lamination
segments as a form of feed on product distribution for multiple reactions”, [Link].J. 101, 323-331.
Kashid, M.N., Platte, F., Agar, D.W. and Turek, S., 2007, “Computational modeling of slug flow in a capillary
microreactor”, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, 203, 487-497.
Norton, D.G. and Vlachos, D.G., 2003, “Combustion characteristics and flame stability at the microscale: a CFD
study of premixed methane/air”, Chem. Eng. Sci. 58, 4871-4882.
Holger LÖwer‡, Volker Hessel and Andreas Muller., 2002 “Microreactors: prospects already achieved and possible
misuse”, Pure appl. Chem. IUPAC, 74(12), 2271-2274.
Michiel [Link]., Freek Kapteijin., Jacob, A. and John J. Heiszwolf., 2008, “Multiphase monolith reactors:
chemical reaction engineering of segmented flow in microchannels”, [Link]. 63, 5897-5898.
…finally