Multiphase flow modelling of chemical processes

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Multiphase flows are ubiquitous in chemical and mineral processing operations. Examples are: (a) bitumen extraction where in bitumen, water, sand and air are contacted either in the hydro transport lines or in rotating tumblers, followed by processing in separation vessels and flotation devices, (b) distillation columns and (c) fluidized beds. Yet fundamental understanding of these flows is very difficult to develop resulting in simplifying assumptions that are invoked to enable simple design procedures. Examples such as the ideal distillation tray, well stirred mixing tank with homogenous compositions are very common in chemical engineering. These simplifications, while allowing simple design procedures to be developed, often limit the ability of designers to scale up an operation from bench scale to pilot scale to full plant scale. Fortunately powerful computers and recent computational algorithms are enabling development of computational fluid dynamics and in particular direct simulation of multiphase flows. My main contributions have been both in the development of next generation, efficient algorithms as well as applications of CFD to many practical problems encountered in the energy sector. During the next period of research under this Discovery Grant, I plan to continue the study of multiphase flows for handling both solid-fluid systems and fluid-fluid systems . The focus will be on flow of two phase mixtures in complex geometries like the twin-screw extruders encountered polymer processing, micro fluidic devices encountered in Lab-on-A-Chipo devices, flow in fuel cell stacks.