부산대학교 도서관

Continuous milli-scale reactors with internal mixing elements are increasingly used in the chemical industry and considered for polymerization processes. Their small scale makes them especially susceptible to fouling. Addressing this problem, this article presents a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of a Miprowa millireactor channel. The flow field is examined with the finite-element based software package COMSOL Multiphysics to identify areas of low velocity, generally prone to fouling during polymerization reactions. For simplicity, the flow is assumed incompressible and isothermal, using the material properties of water. Three geometry modifications to the mixing elements are proposed. Numerical simulations of the flow field around the proposed mixing elements show a reduction in areas with stagnating flow by 20%, reducing the fouling potential without substantially affecting other metrics such as the pressure loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]