Mixing In Jet-Stirred Reactors With Different Geometries

  • Wassim W. Ayass

Student thesis: Master's Thesis

Abstract

This work offers a well-developed understanding of the mixing process inside Jet- Stirred Reactors (JSR’s) with different geometries. Due to the difficulty of manufacturing these JSR’s made in quartz, existing JSR configurations were assessed with certain modifications and optimal operating conditions were suggested for each reactor. The effect of changing the reactor volume, the nozzle diameter and shape on mixing were both studied. Two nozzle geometries were examined in this study, a crossed shape nozzle and an inclined shape nozzle. Overall, six reactor configurations were assessed by conducting tracer experiments - using the state-of-art technologies of high-speed cameras and laser absorption spectroscopy- and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The high-speed camera tracer experiment gives unique qualitative information – not present in the literature – about the actual flow field. On the other hand, when using the laser technique, a more quantitative analysis emerges with determining the experimental residence time distribution (RTD) curves of each reactor. Comparing these RTD curves with the ideal curve helped in eliminating two cases. Finally, the CFD simulations predict the RTD curves as well as the mixing levels of the JSR’s operated at different residence times. All of these performed studies suggested the use of an inclined nozzle configuration with a reactor diameter D of 40mm and a nozzle diameter d of 1mm as the optimal choice for low residence time operation. However, for higher residence times, the crossed configuration reactor with D=56mm and d=0.3mm gave a nearly perfect behavior.
Date of AwardDec 2013
Original languageEnglish (US)
Awarding Institution
  • Physical Sciences and Engineering
SupervisorMani Sarathy (Supervisor)

Keywords

  • Jet-stirred Reactors
  • Mixing
  • Residence time distribution
  • reactor engineering

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