Estimation of Hydrodynamic Parameters in Spinning Cone Column Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

Spinning cone column (SCC) is a gas–liquid contacting device which is utilized in the food processing industries, and is useful in areas that require tolerance to the presence of solids and low-thermal impact of processing. The geometrical complexity, rotational parts, and different flow regimes inside SCC columns make modeling and simulation of these columns complicated, for which computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used here. This work contains presenting the results of hydrodynamic parameters, including dry and two-phase pressure drops and flooding predictions in a pilot scale SCC. For expressing turbulence in gas and liquid phases, the standard $${k{-}\varepsilon }$$ model and the zero equation model were utilized, respectively. For predicting flooding points, the dimensionless number Fr LG is used, when it is equal to 1 or more, flooding is occurred in the column. CFD results shows that increasing the rotating speed and also air flow rate at specific liquid flows would cause the pressure drop to increase at both states of dry and two-phase columns, which corresponds to the experimental data. This simulation results can be utilized for prediction of the industrial applications of SCC, including estimation of the pressure drop parameters, flooding, column efficiency and also designing the diameters of SCC column.