CFD simulation of gas and non-Newtonian fluid two-phase flow in anaerobic digesters

Water Research
Binxin Wu

Abstract

This paper presents an Eulerian multiphase flow model that characterizes gas mixing in anaerobic digesters. In the model development, liquid manure is assumed to be water or a non-Newtonian fluid that is dependent on total solids (TS) concentration. To establish the appropriate models for different TS levels, twelve turbulence models are evaluated by comparing the frictional pressure drops of gas and non-Newtonian fluid two-phase flow in a horizontal pipe obtained from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with those from a correlation analysis. The commercial CFD software, Fluent12.0, is employed to simulate the multiphase flow in the digesters. The simulation results in a small-sized digester are validated against the experimental data from literature. Comparison of two gas mixing designs in a medium-sized digester demonstrates that mixing intensity is insensitive to the TS in confined gas mixing, whereas there are significant decreases with increases of TS in unconfined gas mixing. Moreover, comparison of three mixing methods indicates that gas mixing is more efficient than mixing by pumped circulation while it is less efficient than mechanical mixing.

References

Sep 8, 2004·Water Research·Khursheed KarimM H al-Dahhan
Feb 3, 2005·Biotechnology and Bioengineering·Mehul S Vesvikar, Muthanna Al-Dahhan
May 22, 2007·Biotechnology and Bioengineering·Rajneesh Varma, Muthanna Al-Dahhan
Jun 16, 2007·Water Research·Khursheed KarimMuthanna H Al-Dahhan
Aug 21, 2007·Biotechnology and Bioengineering·Binxin Wu, Shulin Chen
Nov 17, 2009·Water Research·Binxin Wu

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Citations

Sep 18, 2015·Water Research·Davide DapeloJohn Bridgeman
Aug 18, 2016·Environmental Technology·Fengping WangShuhao Huo
Aug 11, 2016·Water Science and Technology : a Journal of the International Association on Water Pollution Research·R W SamstagJ Laurent
Jul 10, 2020·Water Science and Technology : a Journal of the International Association on Water Pollution Research·D Dapelo, J Bridgeman
Jul 11, 2018·Water Research·Ibrahim Denka KariyamaBinxin Wu
Aug 20, 2021·Environmental Technology·Tiago B FerreiraCláudio Leite de Souza
Aug 17, 2021·Water Research·Mohammad Shakil AhmmedDamien J Batstone

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