Turbulence-assisted shear controllable synthesis of silicon oxide micro/nano particles using a counter axial-swirling impinging jet flow reactor

Abstract

It has been recognised that turbulence shear can be used to effectively control and affect the synthesis of micro/nano particles. The present study focuses on turbulence-assisted shear controllable synthesis of silica (SiO2) micro/nano particles and investigates such shear controllable synthesis process using a counter axial-swirling impinging jet flow vortex flow reactor. Two counter swirling flow streams impinge in the reaction chamber to significantly intensify the local turbulence shear with the aid of ultrasound irradiation. The consequence of the turbulent shear leads to either the trapping of nano-particle nucleus into the turbulent eddies to form the aggregated micro/nana particles or the confinement of the growth of agglomerated micro/nano particles so as to form highly uniform and better morphological micro/nano particles. The experimental results have affirmed the postulation that the local turbulent shear generated by the turbulent eddies with the length scales down to the Kolmogorov length scale may directly interact with the aggregated SiO2 micro/nano particles, influencing the particle spherical morphology and size distribution. In addition, it has been found that synthesis performance can be further improved by intensifying the local turbulent shear through the ultrasound irradiation in the synthesis process. Both CFD simulation and experimental results clearly indicate the existence of the correlation in the synthesized SiO2 micro/nano particle characteristics with the local turbulence shear and mass transfer occurring in counter swirl impinge jet flow.