Competing Rates in Mixing Sensitive Processes: design fundamentals for meso-scale and transient effects

在化学过程工程领域有两个有趣的全球趋势值得关注。在欧洲，土地稀缺，对过程集约化有着强烈的承诺。这导致了微型反应堆的发展，这种反应堆非常小（体积在微升数量级）。在全球商品化学品市场上，规模经济驱动着工艺设计和“创纪录产能”工厂的定期投产。这些反应堆的容量通常是1百万升。加拿大的两个重要产业，油砂开采和矿物加工，需要一些世界上最大的船只。这两个行业也面临着多相和部分混相多组分混合的难题。

There are two interesting global trends to watch in chemical process engineering. In Europe, land is scarce and there is a strong commitment to process intensification. This has led to the development of micro-reactors which are extremely small (volumes of the order of micro-litres). In the global commodity chemicals market, economies of scale drive process design and "record capacity" plants are regularly commissioned. These reactor volumes are typically 1 Mega-litre. Two important industries in Canada, oil sands extraction and mineral processing, require some of the largest vessels in the world. These two industries also face difficult problems in multi-phase and partially-miscible multi-component mixing. Nano-technology has taught us that dramatic changes of scale require a shift in thinking: the physics stays the same but the dominant variables change. On moving from the litre to the micro-litre scale, the particle mass becomes negligible and tiny surface charges become extremely important. On moving from the 1L to the 1 ML scale, the blend time becomes so long relative to the key process time-scales that it is essentially infinite. At the Mega-Scale, local mixing conditions become extremely important and often dominate process performance. To successfully design and operate 1ML process vessels, clear mixing specifications are needed. This requires an understanding of how local turbulence, local segregation (injection concentration), and mixing time interact with the time scales, length scales, and concentration scales in the process. We have two test vessels which allow efficient measurement of these variables. The first has been applied to scale-down of nano-particle precipitation at very high turbulence levels; the second has allowed us to improve demulsifier performance at the Mega-Scale. Both have provided dramatic successes for our industrial partners through a better understanding of the importance of local mixing conditions. In this proposal we expand from the practical design and application of mixing principles to developing the theory which will allow modelling and prediction of mixing from the micro-litre to the Mega-Litre scale.