Effect of Hydrodynamic Heterogeneity on Micromixing in a Taylor-Couette Flow Reactor with Lobed Inner Cylinder

Abstract

Effect of hydrodynamic heterogeneity on micromixing intensification in a Taylor-Couette flow reactor (TC) with variable configurations of inner cylinder has been investigated by adoption of a parallel competing iodide-iodate reaction system. Two types of inner cylinder, circular inner cylinder and lobed inner cylinder (CTC and LTC), were used to generate hydrodynamic hydrodynamic heterogeneity for comparison of the micromixing intensification, focusing on the effects of the Reynolds number of the TC reactor, the acid concentration, and the feeding time. The Segregation index (Xs) was employed to evaluate the micromixing efficiency. It was revealed that Xs decreases with the increase of Reynolds number and feeding time but increases with the increase of acid concentration for both the CTC and LTC. However, the LTC does present a better micromixing performance at various operating conditions than that of the CTC as affirmed by both the experimental and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation results.