Simulation of supercritical water–hydrocarbon mixing in a cylindrical tee at intermediate Reynolds number: Formulation, numerical method and laminar mixing

Abstract

The objective of this work is to study the flow dynamics and mixing of supercritical water and a model hydrocarbon (n-decane), under fully miscible conditions, in a small scale cylindrical tee mixer (pipe ID=2.4mm), at an intermediate inlet Reynolds number of 500 using 3-D CFD simulations. A Peng–Robinson EoS with standard van der Waals mixing rules is employed to model the near-critical thermodynamics with the mixture binary interaction parameter obtained from a Predictive Peng–Robinson EoS using group contribution theory (PPR78). The n-decane stream is introduced at the colder temperature of 700K to ensure operation above the Upper Critical Solution Temperature (UCST, 632K) of the water n-decane system while the water stream enters at a higher temperature of 800K. Under these conditions, the flow in the tee mixer remains laminar and steady-state is reached. Mixing occurs predominantly due to the circulating action of a counter-rotating vortex pair (CVP) in the body of the hydrocarbon jet entering from the top. This CVP is formed due to the reorientation of the streamwise vorticity pre-existing within the hydrocarbon jet as it flows down the vertical pipe of the tee junction. The advective transport is further assisted by a secondary flow of water from the bottom stream, around the hydrocarbon jet, toward the space vacated near the top of the downstream pipe section by the downward motion of the HC jet. The CVP becomes progressively weaker due to vorticity diffusion as it is advected downstream and beyond 10–12 diameter lengths downstream of the mixing joint, transport is mainly controlled by molecular diffusion. It was found that the variations of density and transport properties with temperature do not have a significant impact on the flow and mixing dynamics for a ΔT=100K between the two streams. Local cooling of the fluid mixture was also observed in the mixing of water and n-decane streams entering at the same temperature (initially isothermal). This cooling effect is due to the diffusion of species along a gradient in their partial enthalpy in the mixture. Such gradients in species partial enthalpies are non-zero under near-critical conditions even for initially isothermal flows due to the non-ideality of the fluid mixture under these conditions. This local heating/cooling effect at near-critical conditions could give rise to unexpected formation of phases when operating close to critical points.