An investigation of flow regimes and mixing in a novel arrow-shaped jet reactor

Abstract

Fluid mixing plays a vital role in the industry of chemical engineering. In this work, a novel arrow-shaped jet reactor by varying the angle of fluid impingement in the inlet channel was investigated. Flow field visualization experiments using Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence (PLIF) technique were carried out to study various flow regimes and mixing performance. Results show that differentiated flow patterns of engulfment flow regimes appear within the arrow-shaped jet reactor. Particularly, vortex ring shedding was found in the unsteady engulfing flow regime, which promoted the mixing significantly. Besides, the mechanism of the variation of fluid impinging angle on mixing in an arrow-shaped jet reactor was investigated by numerical simulation. The results indicate that the transformation from double-leg vortex to single-leg vortex and the increase of the volume of vortex clusters caused by vortex ring shedding are the main reasons for the improvement of the mixing of engulfment flow regime.