CFD modeling of hydrodynamics and mass transfer of Rhodamine B in annular reactor

Abstract

The hydrodynamics and mass transfer are the two crucial issues in annular reactors. An accurate prediction of these issues is required for design, optimization and scale-up applications. The present study deals with the modeling and simulation of flow through an annular reactor at different hydrodynamic conditions using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to investigate the hydrodynamics and mass transfer. CFD modeling was utilized to predict velocity distribution, average velocity and average mass transfer coefficient in the annular geometry. The results of CFD simulations were compared with the mathematically derived equations and already developed correlations for validation purposes. CFD modeling was found suitable for predicting hydrodynamics and mass transfer for annular geometry under laminar flow conditions. It was observed that CFD also provides local values of the parameters of interest in addition to the average values for the simulated geometry.