Modeling and Simulation of Solid‐Bowl Centrifuges as an Aspect of the Advancing Digitization in Solid‐Liquid Separation

Abstract

AbstractAs a part of the Industry 4.0 initiative, the level of digitization in the process industry is increasing. Through a close link between analytics and dynamic modeling, digitization enables the optimization of processes and the model predictive control. In the field of solid‐liquid separation using centrifuges, the advancing digitization forces the development of methods for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and short‐cut models to deepen process understanding and process intensification. CFD should be seen as support for experiments to develop suitable short‐cut models for the process simulation. Based on the prerequisites, this article describes the development of dynamic models and their application using the example of solid bowl centrifuges. Therefore, the particulate level is first addressed by discussing critical material properties. Afterwards, the developed numerical algorithms to investigate centrifuges on different time and length scales will be presented. Finally, the mathematical modeling on the process level by using short‐cut models is shown and discussed for decanter and tubular centrifuges.