Chemical and Process Engineering: New Frontiers

The whirlpool separator, used for hot trub separation, is prevalent in the brewing industry. It is a kind of a hydrocyclone inside of which a tea leaf effect occurs, which is sediment accumulation into a cone shape at the central part of the tank’s bottom. This manner of sediment accumulation is caused by the secondary flow occurring in the so-called Ekman boundary layer. This article is a summary of the research, which has been conducted for many years and involved observation, simulation and experimental research on the recognition and formation of the secondary flow accumulating the sediment cone. Secondary flows occurring in a whirlpool were identified through CFD simulation and PIV experiments, and are presented in this paper. Based on their location and direction, an attempt to determine their impact on the separation process taking place in the whirlpool has been made. The secondary flow identification methods proposed in this paper can be successfully applied in other solutions, e. g. structural ones, which involve rotational-flow-based separation.

A one-dimensional transient mathematical model describing thermal and flow phenomena during coal coking in an oven chamber was studied in the paper. It also accounts for heat conduction in the ceramic oven wall when assuming a constant temperature at the heating channel side. The model was solved numerically using partly implicit methods for gas flow and heat transfer problems. The histories of temperature, gas evolution and internal pressure were presented and analysed. The theoretical predictions of temperature change in the centre plane of the coke oven were compared with industrialscale measurements. Both, the experimental data and obtained numerical results show that moisture content determines the coking process dynamics, lagging the temperature increase above the water steam evaporation temperature and in consequence the total coking time. The phenomenon of internal pressure generation in the context of overlapping effects of simultaneously occurring coal transitions - devolatilisation and coal permeability decrease under plastic stage - was also discussed.

To minimize oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emission, maximize boiler combustion efficiency, achieve safe and reliable burner combustion, it is crucial to master global boiler and at-the-burner control of fuel and air flows. Non-uniform pulverized fuel (PF) and air flows to burners reduce flame stability and pose risk to boiler safety by risk of reverse flue gas and fuel flow into burners. This paper presents integrated techniques implemented at pilot ESKOM power plants for the determination of global boiler air/flue gas distribution, wind-box air distribution and measures for making uniform the flow being delivered to burners within a wind-box system. This is achieved by Process Flow Modelling, at-the-burner static pressure measurements and CFD characterization. Global boiler mass and energy balances combined with validated site measurements are used in an integrated approach to calculate the total (stoichiometric + excess) air mass flow rate required to burn the coal quality being fired, determine the actual quantity of air that flows through the burners and the furnace ingress air. CFD analysis and use of at-the-burner static, total pressure and temperature measurements are utilized in a 2-pronged approach to determine root-causes for burner fires and to evaluate secondary air distribution between burners.

Searching for new refrigerants is one of the most significant scientific problems in refrigeration. There are ecological refrigerants commonly known: H2O and CO2. H2O and CO2 known as natural refrigerants, but they have problems:a high freezing point of H2O and a low triple point of CO2. These problems can be solved by the application of a hybrid sorption-compression refrigeration cycle. The cycle combines the application possibility of H2O in the high temperature sorption stage and the low temperature application of CO2 in the compression stage. This solution gives significant energy savings in comparison with the two-stage compressor cycle and with the one-stage transcritical CO2 cycle. Besides, the sorption cycle may be powered by low temperature waste heat or renewable heat. This is an original idea of the authors. In the paper an analysis of the possible extension of this solution for high capacity industrial refrigeration is presented. The estimated energy savings as well as TEWI (Total Equivalent Warming Impact) index for ecological gains are calculated.

This contribution deals with the heat transfer parameters and pressure losses in heat exchange sets with six geometrical arrangements at low Re values (Re from 476 to 2926). Geometrical arrangements were characterised by the h/H ratio ranging from 0.2 to 1.0. The experiments used the holographic interferometry method in real time. This method enables visible and quantitative evaluations of images of temperature fields in the examined heat exchange. These images are used to determine the local and mean heat transfer parameters. The obtained data were used to determine the Colburn j-factor and the friction coefficient f. The measured values show that by using the profiled heat exchange surfaces and inserting regulating tubes, an intensification of heat transfer (increase of Num, and/or j) was achieved. However, pressure losses recorded a significant increase (increase of f).

This article presents experimental studies on drying kinetics and quality effects of red beetroot (Beta vulgaris L.) after convective drying with a preliminary osmotic pretreatment. The effects of the osmotic agent (NaCl) concentration and the osmotic bath time on the product colour and nutrient content preservation, the water activity, and rehydration ability after drying were analysed. Osmotic dehydration curves and Solid Gain (SG), Water Loss (WL), Weight Reduction (WR) were determined. It was proved that drying of beetroot with osmotic pretreatment contributes to shorter drying time, smaller water activity, higher retention of betanin, better colour preservation, and a greater degree of water resorption.

The paper proposes a procedure which enables to determine selected geometric and operating parameters for twin-fluid liquid-to-air atomisers with internal mixing. The presented approach assumes that in order to ensure proper operation of an atomiser it is necessary to design its structure and flow parameters in such a way so that the flow inside the mixing chamber has a dispersive character. In order to calculate a required exhaust cross-section for the analysed atomiser, conditions within the exhaust plane: pressure, density and outflow velocity were estimated. In order to determine diameter and number of orifices supplying the liquid to the mixing chamber of the investigated atomiser type, a multi-parameter analysis based on numerical fluid mechanics was performed. The final part of the paper presents selected results obtained from experimental stand measurements made on an atomiser designed according to the presented procedure.

Over the last decades the method of proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) has been successfully employed for reduced order modelling (ROM) in many applications, including distributed parameter models of chemical reactors. Nevertheless, there are still a number of issues that need further investigation. Among them, the policy of the collection of representative ensemble of experimental or simulation data, being a starting and perhaps most crucial point of the POD-based model reduction procedure. This paper summarises the theoretical background of the POD method and briefly discusses the sampling issue. Next, the reduction procedure is applied to an idealised model of circulating fluidised bed combustor (CFBC). Results obtained confirm that a proper choice of the sampling strategy is essential for the modes convergence however, even low number of observations can be sufficient for the determination of the faithful dynamical ROM.