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Mixing Study in an Unbaffled Stirred Precipitator Using LES Modelling

DOI: 10.1155/2012/450491

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Abstract:

This paper describes the CFD modelling of a reactor operating in the nuclear industry using LES approach. The reactor consists of an unbaffled stirred tank reactor in which plutonium precipitation reactions are carried out. The flow generated in such a precipitator is complex and there is very little information available in the literature about unbaffled reactors stirred with magnetic rod. That is why a hydrodynamic modelling has been developed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in order to get accurate description of mixing phenomena inside the precipitator and therefore to be able to predict the solid particle properties. Due to the strong turbulence anisotropy, the turbulence transport simulation is achieved by a large eddy simulation (LES) approach which gives unsteady solutions. The numerical simulations are performed in 3D using the Trio_U code developed at the Commissariat à l'énergie Atomique. The predictive performances of the modelling are analysed through a mixing phenomena study. Both experimental and numerical studies are performed. This work shows how hydrodynamics inside the reactor can have a noticeable effect on the precipitate properties and how LES modelling is a very effective tool for the process control. 1. Introduction Owing to the manipulation of radioactive materials at large scale, nuclear industry has to implement reactors with unusual design. An unbaffled magnetic rod-stirred reactor thus has been developed in the spent nuclear fuel reprocessing industry for use as a precipitator [1, 2]. Precipitation reactions being very fast are well known to be highly sensitive to mixing effects. That is why an accurate knowledge of the hydrodynamics inside the reactor is particularly essential to control the quality of the solid particles formed, on the one hand, and to develop a global modelling of the precipitation process, on the other hand. Flows in stirred unbaffled vessels have not been widely discussed in the literature, unlike stirred baffled vessels, because they are less frequently used in processes [2–4]. Their mixing performance is significantly lower due to the predominance of the tangential velocity over the axial and radial velocity components. Without counterimpellers, however, fluid rotation leads to the formation of a vortex that distorts the free surface; some applications can take advantage of this vortex. In the precipitator considered here, this configuration limits scaling by maintaining potentially adhering particles away from the walls and thus facilitates maintenance procedures that are particularly

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