CFD Evaluation of Mixing Processes for High-Level Nuclear Waste Tanks

Authors

Maximiliano Edrei, Florida International UniversityFollow

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Science (MS)

Major/Program

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor's Name

Cheng-Xian Lin

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee chair

Second Advisor's Name

Pezhman Mardanpour

Second Advisor's Committee Title

committee member

Third Advisor's Name

Dwayne McDaniel

Third Advisor's Committee Title

committee member

Fourth Advisor's Name

Leonel Lagos

Fourth Advisor's Committee Title

committee member

Keywords

CFD, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Bubble collumns, Radial Wall Jet Impingement

Date of Defense

11-17-2017

Abstract

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been applied to investigate two aspects of a mixing process for high level nuclear waste tanks. Through CFD the applicability of Poreh’s correlations that are currently used to describe the radial wall jets in the Pulse Jet Mixing (PJM) process were assessed. In addition, simulations were conducted in order to investigate mean hydrodynamic characteristics of sparged non-Newtonian fluids for the use in the PJM process.

Three single phase turbulent simulations using the commercial package STAR-CCM+ were successively conducted. A model validated with experimental data was developed and successively altered to see effects of low characteristic ratio and a curved impingement surface. Results suggested that Poreh’s correlations are applicable under PJM conditions and geometry.

Lastly, multi-phase Eulerian-Eulerian Simulations were conducted using the commercial software package ANSYS Fluent. Altering the characteristic ratio (h/D) of a sparged non-Newtonian fluid system resulted in a trend of flattening air volume fraction and air axial velocity profiles with decreasing characteristic ratio.

Identifier

FIDC004038

Recommended Citation

Edrei, Maximiliano, "CFD Evaluation of Mixing Processes for High-Level Nuclear Waste Tanks" (2017). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3528.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3528