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Article history: A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based model of a two-phase countercurrent pulsed sieve plate
Received 19 February 2010 extraction column has been developed. EulerEuler multiphase ow model and standard k turbulence
Received in revised form 14 April 2010 model for multiphase ow were used. Sieve plates in the column were modeled using the porous media
Accepted 15 April 2010
formulation. The coefcients of porous media were evaluated using radiotracer RTD analysis data. A pulse
generation model was developed and incorporated to simulate the effect of pulses in the system. The
Keywords:
developed simulation approach has been proved successful and it provided the possibility of modeling
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
the subject system with lesser computational resources. The models used for CFD simulation of the system
Radiotracer
Residence Time Distribution (RTD)
were suitable and simulation results were found 72.17% of the radiotracer experiment.
Liquidliquid extraction 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction involved. Pulsed sieve plate extraction column, which is the subject
of this paper, nds a great deal of applications in the eld of haz-
Liquidliquid extraction is a process of separation of con- ardous materials due to the absence of mechanical moving parts
stituents of a liquid phase by contacting it with another immiscible inside the column and facility of having the pulsing mechanism
liquid phase. Petroleum, nuclear, chemical, metallurgical, phar- away from the column. The pulsation of uids inside the sieve tray
maceutical, food processing and bio-processing industries are the column produces shearing and turbulence causing the breakage
major beneciaries of this technology. Two major categories of of droplets and as a consequence, the interfacial area required for
liquidliquid extraction equipments are single-stage and multi- mass transfer operation is increased. Also, phases in such columns
stage extractors [1]. Single-stage equipments provide one stage are subject to ow counter currently to achieve high concentration
contact in a single or a combination of devices. A mixer-settler is a gradients for efcient mass transfer.
typical example of these kinds of equipments. In multi-stage equip- The design of a pulsed sieve plate extraction column is generally
ments, many stages or their equivalents may be incorporated into based on HTUNTU concept in which ow models such as mixers in
a single device. Centrifugal extractors and column type contactors series with back mixing and axial dispersion model are employed.
are typical examples of multi-stage equipments. The column type But these models are too simple to describe the real hydrodynamics
contactors are commonly used in chemical industries. These can be of such systems, as they are not capable of visualizing the ow pat-
classied as static columns (e.g. sieve tray, randomly packed and tern inside the system. Detailed experimental investigations have
structure packed columns) and agitated columns (e.g. rotating disk been reported with reference to the hydrodynamic characteristics
contactor, Scheibel column, Kuhni column, Karr column and pulsed of a pulsed sieve plate extraction column as a function of operating
column). Van Dijck [2] introduced the concept of pulsed columns. parameters using radiotracer technology [35].
He classied them as reciprocating perforated plate column and In this modern era, industry is looking for more predictive tech-
liquid pulsed column depending upon the mechanism of pulsing niques and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a relatively new
but more powerful approach that provides detailed spatial distri-
bution of ow elds. It can provide three-dimensional visualization
of a system by creating maps of velocity vectors, streamlines or iso-
Corresponding author at: Department of Nuclear Engineering, Pakistan Institute
value contours, etc. The exciting CFD results are being questioned
of Engineering and Applied Sciences [PIEAS], P.O. Nilore, Islamabad 45650, Pakistan.
Tel.: +92 51 2207381; fax: +92 51 2208070. by industries about reliability due to the lack of experimental data
E-mail addresses: ghiyasuddin@hotmail.com, fac192@pieas.edu.pk (G.U. Din). for model verication and validation. This is the reason why CFD
1383-5866/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.seppur.2010.04.017
G.U. Din et al. / Separation and Purication Technology 73 (2010) 302309 303
time; Qd is the dispersed phase ow rate; VR is the effective reactor = q p + . q + q q g + (Rpq + mpq vpq mqp vqp )
volume. p=1
The hydrodynamics of the dispersed phase was simulated using
+ (Fq + Flift,q + Fvm,q ) (4)
the axial dispersion model (ADM). Fig. 2 shows typical normalized
RTD function curves obtained at the input (D2 ) and output (D3 ) with
model output response of dispersed phase in response to an instan- This equation includes the effects of drag, external body,
taneous pulse injection at (D1 ). The complete aspects of radiotracer lift and virtual mass forces. Expressions for these forces along
RTD analysis can be seen in Din et al. [4]. with the detail of terminologies involved in these equations are
given in FLUENT Documentation [15] and Ranade [18]. In the
2.3. CFD simulation strategy of pulsed sieve plate extraction present study, only the drag force is taken into account as other
column forces are very small in liquidliquid type of ows in column
type contactors. Schiller and Naumann model available in FLU-
The ow inside pulsed sieve plate extraction column is two- ENT 6.3 software was used for the evaluation of drag function.
phase, turbulent and inherently transient due to the presence of There are various turbulence models available in the FLUENT
pulses. Moreover, complex hydrodynamics in these columns need 6.3 software to describe the effects of turbulent uctuations in
reasonable resolution of grid points to visualize ow pattern inside the velocities of phases and other scalar quantities. Standard
the system and meet the convergence criteria. Therefore, a 3D k turbulence model for each phase was chosen to model the
simulation of the subject system on full scale is computationally turbulence in the system. A detail of the transport equations
expensive and very demanding with reference to computational involved in this turbulence model is available in the literature
machine time and requirement of adequate memory for data pro- [15,18].
cessing and storage. Keeping in view this, a hybrid approach based The light phase (kerosene) and the heavy phase (water) were
on the CFD modeling using FLUENT 6.3 software and radiotracer taken as continuous and dispersed phase, respectively. The diame-
RTD tracing has been developed. The strategy for this approach was ter of the droplet was assumed constant as 0.005 m. The operating
based on simulation on a 2D axisymmetric reduced domain con- pressure was set to 101,325 Pa (1 atm) at the bottom right corner
sisting of four sieve plates only. As the whole length of the column of the domain (Fig. 3(a)) and the gravity was set to 9.8 m/s2 in the
was equipped with similar sieve plates at equal distances, there- negative direction of x-axis in the operating condition panel. Spec-
fore, the ow was considered identical in the rest of the column. ied velocity boundary condition was used at the inlets and outlets
Since, it was not possible to model the sieve plates each consisting of dispersed and continuous phases with magnitude and appro-
of approximately 140 holes (Table 1) in 2D axisymmetric domain, priate direction of ow. Specied velocity boundary condition was
therefore, the sieve plate was modeled by assuming it as a thin also provided at the bottom of the column as shown in Fig. 3(a)
layer of porous medium. The porous media model representing the and a User Dened Function (UDF) was associated to the velocity
306 G.U. Din et al. / Separation and Purication Technology 73 (2010) 302309
Fig. 3. Computational grid and boundary conditions: (a) complete geometry of the column; (b) single-hole geometry for estimation of porous media coefcients.
of water to represent the generation of pulses inside the column. dissipation rate and turbulent viscosity were provided for the cal-
The pulse generation model that has been written in C++ and asso- culation. The solution was initialized by assuming a portion of the
ciated with this boundary condition is given in Section 2.4. Pressure lower separating chamber, at 10 cm below the light phase inlet, to
outlet boundary with zero Pascal gauge pressure was established be lled with dispersed phase (water). This methodology of ini-
at the top of the column as per schematic of the column. A no-slip tialization has been adopted to establish a liquidliquid interface
boundary condition was used for the walls of the column and inlets as described in Section 2.1. All the equations mentioned above
of both phases. The coefcients of porous medium were evaluated were solved simultaneous with size of the time step 0.01 s while
as described in Section 2.5 and assigned in the boundary condition 100 hydrodynamic iterations were performed in each of the time
panel. step.
Discretization was carried out by using the second order upwind
scheme for momentum, turbulent kinetic energy and turbulent dis-
sipation rate while rst order upwind discretization scheme was 2.4. Pulse generation model
used for the calculation of volume fraction. Phase coupled SIMPLE
scheme was utilized for pressurevelocity coupling. Suitable val- Flow inside the pulsed sieve plate extraction column is oscil-
ues of under relaxation factors for pressure, momentum, density, lating due to the operation of pulsing unit at the bottom. The
body force, volume fraction, turbulent kinetic energy, turbulent timevelocity prole generated due to the presence of pulses can
G.U. Din et al. / Separation and Purication Technology 73 (2010) 302309 307
be written as:
Dp2
u(t) = Af cos(2ft) (5)
Ds2
Fig. 6. Contours of stream function of dispersed phase at (a) t = 36.3 s and (b)
t = 36.6 s.
Fig. 8. Volume fraction of dispersed phase in the pulsed sieve plate column calcu-
lated by CFD.
D = 1 1007
Therefore,
D = 5.23 109
was forced to move from top to bottom of this geometry to simulate Fig. 5 shows the contours of volume fraction of dispersed phase
the ow through a single hole of the sieve plate. This information (water) inside the pulsed sieve plate extraction column at a par-
regarding the proportions of water and kerosene was gathered from ticular time (t = 36.7 s) when ow conditions are developed. It has
the radiotracer RTD analysis experimental data. Therefore, this been observed that a portion of the lower separating chamber at
methodology has been named as a hybrid approach based on CFD 10 cm below the continuous phase inlet is lled with dispersed
simulation and radiotracer RTD analysis. Specied velocity bound- phase and a liquidliquid interface has been established. This inter-
ary condition was used on the top and outow boundary condition face level was basically established while initializing the solution
was assigned on the bottom of this geometry. The mixture of water (Section 2.3) and it remained there throughout the simulation
and kerosene was made to ow through this single-hole geometry time. Therefore, this simulation strategy has been proved identi-
for a range of velocities dened by the pulse velocity (Fig. 4) and cal to the experimental methodology of creating and stabilizing a
ow rates of phases. All other models used for this simulation were liquidliquid interface during the experiment (Section 2.1).
similar to that of the complete simulation of the system, i.e. multi- Fig. 5 also shows the entrance of dispersed phase from the inlet
phase EulerEuler model and standard k turbulence model were and its downward movement through the continuous phase under
invoked. The pressure drop across the single hole was calculated gravity where it encounters four regularly spaced sieve plates. It
for each of the velocity as mentioned earlier by steady state solu- has been observed that the dispersed phase is accumulated inside
tion. This pressure gradient may be considered equivalent to the and in the vicinity of sieve plates. It is because of the reason that
pressure gradient across the sieve plate with 25% open area. As the each of the sieve plates behaves as a momentum sink and causes
pressure gradient was found to be a linear function of velocity with a pressure drop across the plate. It has been further observed that
the following equation: accumulation of dispersed phase volume on the two middle sieve
p plates is almost identical while it is different on the top and bottom
= 1 107 v 2190.5 (7) plates. This difference may be due to the reason that ow conditions
x
are different before the top and after the bottom sieve plates. The
similarity in the behavior of two middle plates has supported the
R2 = 0.9939
assumption of reducing the size of the computational domain, i.e.
G.U. Din et al. / Separation and Purication Technology 73 (2010) 302309 309
the ow can be considered identical on each of the sieve plates (Sec- Acknowledgements
tion 2.3). The droplets of the dispersed phase after passing through
the sieve plates enter into the lower separating chamber, join the The authors are grateful to the Higher Education Commis-
liquidliquid interface and nally travel out of the system through sion [HEC] for nancial support in accomplishment of this study.
the dispersed phase outlet. The authors are greatly indebted to the International Atomic
Fig. 6(a and b) shows the contours of stream functions of dis- Energy Agency (IAEA) for providing RTD analysis software pack-
persed phase inside the system at two particular instants when age. The cooperation extended by IAEA through its Regional Project
the ow conditions are developed. These contour plots show re- RAS/8111 entitled Diagnosing industrial multiphase systems by
circulations of the dispersed phase droplets inside the system. process visualization using radiotracers and sealed sources is appre-
These re-circulations are due to the presence of pulsation asso- ciated. The technical assistance extended by Pakistan Institute of
ciated at the bottom of the column. A different ow pattern has Nuclear Science and Technology [PINSTECH] and Pakistan Institute
been observed in the lower and upper part of the column at time of Engineering and Applied Sciences [PIEAS] is thankfully acknowl-
t = 36.3 s (Fig. 6a). This difference is due to the reason that this ow edged.
pattern has been observed at a particular time and the position of
re-circulations may be different at some other instant. The same References
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