Petroleum has been extracted from oil reservoirs using different techniques. This activity is accompanied for a large amount of water and sometimes mixed with gas. This produced water has a high oil concentration and other toxic chemical compounds, thus, it must be treated to be reused or released to environment according to environmental protection regulations. Currently, ceramic membrane technology has been employed in the wastewater treatment, due to its high benefit–cost ratio. In this sense, this work aims to study the oil–water mixture separation process using a new configuration of tubular ceramic membrane module by computational fluid dynamic (ANSYS Fluent software). The proposed model is composed of mass and linear momentum conservation equations coupled to Darcy’s law and SST k-ω turbulence model. Results of the volumetric fraction, pressure, and velocity distribution of the oil and water phases are presented and discussed. The results indicated that the proposed model and new device both have great potential to be used on the water/oil separation process and that the transmembrane pressure remains constant in the axial direction and decreases radially through the membranes, indicating an efficient system that favors the transport of clean water and oil retention.

This paper aims to study the hybrid process of osmotic dehydration and convective air drying of foods. Emphasis has been put on cassava cubes (Manihot esculenta Crantz.). Convective drying kinetics of fresh and osmotically dehydrated cassava cubes was evaluated at the following hot air-drying conditions: temperature 50°C, velocity 1.35 m/s, and absolute humidity 0.060 dry water/g. Experimental results of the moisture loss, solids gain, and incorporation of sodium chloride are shown and analyzed. For estimation of the effective mass diffusion coefficient, experiment data of average moisture content of cassava cubes (fresh and osmotically dehydrated) was fitted to the simplified Fick model and a good agreement was obtained. The effective mass diffusivity of the osmotically dehydrated cassava cube was 2.75 x10-10 m2/s and to fresh cassava cubes 5.45x10-10 m2/s.

In this work a transient three-dimensional mathematical model was developed using cylindrical-elliptic coordinate system and thermo-physical properties as functions of the position or temperature. The aim is to predict heat transfer in an elliptic-cylindrical fixed bed reactor subjected to a chemical reaction of first order whose heat of reaction is given by the power law. The governing equation of the phenomenon is solved using the finite volume method, and the WUDS interpolation scheme, and the fully implicit method. Results are presented and discussed by varying reagent concentration, Arrhenius pre-exponential factor and reagent temperature at the reactor inlet. It was found that: first-order reactions at low molar concentrations have few effect in the temperature distribution and high molar concentrations, from 0.8 kmol/m3, increase the radial temperature gradients; an increase in the inlet temperature of reactor favours the increase in the heating zone in the centre of the equipment, but does not significantly alter the radial temperature gradients; the Arrehnius pre-exponential factor varying in the same order of magnitude as the concentration of reagents practically produces the same field of temperature in the reactor,

The shape memory alloys have been used in the most different sectors such as aerospace, automotive and biomedical due to their ability to return to their original shape when subjected to high temperatures. Modeling and numerical simulation have become great allies in engineering due to the possibility of solving complex problems, especially in cases where experimental research is limited. In the present study, a two-dimensional mathematical model was developed to describe the solidification process of a Ni-Ti alloy in stainless steel metal mold sand confined. It was considered the flow of a refrigerant fluid (air) in the top of the mold. The energy conservation equation, including the phase change term, was discretized using finite volume method (FVM) and a fully implicit formulation. Results of the Ni-Ti alloy and mold temperature distributions over time are presented and analyzed. It was verified that results are independent of the mesh size and time step. The last point to be solidified is located at the top left corner of the study domain and the temperature distribution over time proved to be satisfactory for the absence of internal defects, such as voids, cracks, residual stresses and macro segregation.

Mining is a relevant economic activity in many countries. In the treatment of ores, water is an indispensable input. For classification of minerals, the mineral industry uses the hydrocyclone process, where water is used as the medium for transporting dispersed ore particles, that are separated from the liquid by centrifugal force inside anequipmentnamed hydrocyclone.The constant advance of computers processing power, the evolution in the techniques and numerical methods, allow to simulate with great precision complex physical problems of fluid dynamics such as flow in hydrocyclones.In this sense, this work aims to analyze the performance of a concentrating hydrocyclone in the separation of ore and water by CFD. In the fluid dynamics simulation, the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach and the Ansys Fluent software were used. Results of pressure, velocity, and volumetric fraction fields of theinvolved phases are presented and evaluated. From the analysis of the results, it was observed that increasing the flow mixture velocity at the entrance of the equipment tends to increase the separation performance of the hydrocyclone.