Characterization and Optimization of Fluid Flow in a High Biot Number System

Abstract

ABSTRACTExperiments and analysis have been conducted to characterize flow separators used in applications where heated fluid passes between layers of solid material such as in the manufacturing of gelatinous materials. The Biot number of the configuration is the key parameter, and must be taken into account when optimizing performance. It is shown that most prior work was for low Biot number systems, and the particular configurations under consideration operate at high Biot number. Existing designs developed for lower Biot number (such as membrane filter spacers) are shown to perform poorly for this application. An experimental apparatus was designed and fabricated to quantitatively assess pressure drop through the system using different separation strategies. These results were compared with a simplified two-term model based on the physics of viscous drag in these devices. Channels without separators behave like classical Poiseuille flow. Channels with separators can be modeled with a two-term equation: a baseline Poiseuille term and a form drag term. A variety of separator designs are compared and their overall performance is discussed. We also illustrate the high sensitivity to gap height in all configurations.