An improved CFD modeling approach applied for the simulation of gas–liquid interaction in the ozone contactor along with structure optimization

Abstract

An improved two-phase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model has been developed by incorporation of Eulerian-Eulerian approach and user defined function (UDF) to address the liquid–gas flow and ozone reaction in an ozone contactor. Besides, a novel structure optimization design was proposed to improve the performance of contactor. Tracer residence time distribution (RTD) and distribution of CT value were applied as the indicators of contactor performance by conventional single phase model and improved two-phase model, respectively. The validation tests revealed that the improved two-phase CFD model is a reliable tool for the simulation of ozone contactor performance with good accuracy. The simulated results showed that this optimization design can greatly reduce the short-circuiting and dead zone in the contactor, along with the improvement of ozone mass transfer efficiency. Also much higher improvement of average CT value (310% increment) than the improvement of baffling factor (48.8% increment) denotes that the two-phase model is recommendable in the future study, and the use of baffling factor will underestimate the performance of ozone contactor.