A low-dissipative and accurate method of simulating the unsteady mixing process

Abstract

Micro/milli-reactors have been widely used because of their advantages, e.g., intrinsic safety, fast heat transfer and exquisite control of the reaction conditions. However, the mixing efficiency in microreactors is often limited by slow molecular diffusion in steady laminar flow. The mixing efficiency is higher in the unsteady state, but the lack of an accurate simulation method for unsteady mixing limits the development of highly efficient mixers. Thus, this work establishes a new method to precisely simulate the unsteady mixing process, without being affected by numerical diffusion, based on the Lagrangian scalar transport equation. The method is validated by experimental results. Sensitivity analyses are conducted to confirm the simulation results. The accurate simulation of the mixing process will reduce the number of experiments, hence accelerating the development of highly efficient mixers.