Multiphase flow processes

For multiphase flow processes, turbulent effects will be much larger. Even operability will be controlled by the generated turbulence in some cases. For dispersed fluid-fluid flows (as in gas-liquid or liquid-liquid reactors), the local sizes of dispersed phase particles and local transport rates will be controlled by the turbulence energy dissipation rates and turbulence kinetic energy. The modeling of turbulent multiphase flows is discussed in the next chapter. 

The subject of the modeling of multiphase flow processes is quite vast and covers a wide range of sub-topics. It is virtually impossible to treat all the relevant issues in a single book, let alone in a single chapter. Here we attempt to provide a brief review of modeling approaches and cite the key references for further details. An attempt is made to provide sufficient information to develop a baseline model. The first section discusses various flow regimes and their key features. Various approaches to... 

It will be useful to discuss here different modeling approaches and some of the key issues in modeling multiphase flow processes. In general, there are three main issues... 

The recent progress in experimental techniques and applications of DNS and LES for turbulent multiphase flows may lead to new insights necessary to develop better computational models to simulate dispersed multiphase flows with wide particle size distribution in turbulent regimes. Until then, the simulations of such complex turbulent multiphase flow processes have to be accompanied by careful validation (to assess errors due to modeling) and error estimation (due to numerical issues) exercise. Applications of these models to simulate multiphase stirred reactors, bubble column reactors and fluidized bed reactors, are discussed in Part IV of this book. 

The additional sink is added to the usual conservation equations corrected for the volume fraction of the porous media. The governing equations look similar to those for Eulerian multiphase flow processes (Section 4.2.2) except that the volume fraction of the porous medium is not a variable. In the enthalpy equation, it is possible to include influence of porous media by considering an effective thermal conductivity, fceff, of the form ... 

In spite of the above described controversy on extremum principles, researchers affiliated with the National Key Laboratory of Multi-Phase Complex Systems at the Beijing Institute of Process Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a complex Energy-Minimization Multi-Scale (EMMS) methodology and applied it to a variety of multiphase flow processes see Li and Kwauk (2001), Wang (2009) and Wang et al (2010). 

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