In this paper a two-disc spinning disc reactor for intensified biodiesel synthesis is described and numerically simulated. The reactor consists of two flat discs, located coaxially and parallel to each other with a gap of 0.2 mm between the discs. The upper disc is located on a rotating shaft while the lower disc is stationary. The feed liquids, triglycerides (TG) and methanol are introduced coaxially along the centre line of rotating disc and stationary disc. Fluid hydrodynamics in the reactor for synthesis of biodiesel from TG and methanol in the presence of a sodium hydroxide catalyst are simulated, using convection-diffusion-reaction species transport model by the CFD software ANSYS©Fluent v. 13.0. The effect of the upper disc’s spinning speed is evaluated. The results show that the rotational speed increase causes an increase of TG conversion despite the fact that the residence time decreases. Compared to data obtained from adequate experiments, the model shows a satisfactory agreement.
A rotor-stator spinning disk reactor for intensified biodiesel synthesis is described and numerically simulated in the present research. The reactor consists of two flat disks, located coaxially and parallel to each other with a gap ranging from 0.1 mm to 0.2 mm between the disks. The upper disk is located on a rotating shaft while the lower disk is stationary. The feed liquids, triglycerides (TG) and methanol are injected into the reactor from centres of rotating disk and stationary disk, respectively. Fluid hydrodynamics in the reactor for synthesis of biodiesel from TG and methanol in the presence of a sodium hydroxide catalyst are simulated, using convection-diffusion-reaction multicomponent transport model with the CFD software ANSYS©Fluent v. 13.0. Effect of operating conditions on TG conversion is particularly investigated. Simulation results indicate that there is occurrence of back flow close to the stator at the outlet zone. Small gap size and fast rotational speed generally help to intensify mixing among reagents, and consequently enhance TG conversion. However, increasing rotational speed of spinning disk leads to more backflow, which decreases TG conversion. Large flow rate of TG at inlet is not recommended as well because of the short mean residence time of reactants inside the reactor.
Stepped spillway is hydraulic structure designed to dissipate the excess in kinetic energy at the downstream of dams and can reduce the size of stilling basin at the toe of the spillway or chute. The flow on a stepped spillway is characterisedby the large aeration that can prevent or reduce the cavitation damage. The air entrainment starts where the boundary layer attains the free surface of flow; this point is called “point of inception”. Within this work the inception point is determined by using software Ansys Fluent where the volume of fluid (VOF) model is used as a tool to track the free surface thereby the turbulence closure is derived in the k – ε turbulence standard model. This research aims to find new formulas for de-scribe the variation of water depth at step edge and the positions of the inception point, at the same time the contour map ofvelocity, turbulent kinetic energy and strain rate are presented. The found numerical results agree well with experimental results like the values of computed and measured water depth at the inception point and the numerical and experimental inception point locations. Also, the dimensionless water depth profile obtained by numerical method agrees well with that of measurement. This study confirmed that the Ansys Fluent is a robust software for simulating air entrainment and explor-ing more characteristics of flow over stepped spillways.