Search results for "0204 chemical engineering"
showing 10 items of 273 documents
Adaptive PI Control of Bottom Hole Pressure during Oil Well Drilling
2018
Abstract In this paper, we studied the bottom hole pressure (BHP) control in an oil well during drilling. Today marginal wells with narrow pressure windows are frequently being drilled. This requires accurate and precise control to balance the bottom hole pressure between the pore and fracture pressure of the reservoir. This paper presents three control schemes to stabilize the BHP prole, including proportional-integral(PI) control, PI with feed-forward control and adaptive PI with feed-forward control. The proposed schemes are carried out through simulations on a high-fidelity hydraulic drilling simulator for flow rate changes and BHP set-point changes. In fast set-point changes and flow r…
Scale-up and viscosity effects on gas–liquid mass transfer rates in unbaffled stirred tanks
2018
Abstract The interest in the process industry on unbaffled stirred tanks has greatly expanded in the last years because they may bring about significant advantages in a number of applications, including biochemical, food and pharmaceutical processes where the presence of baffles is undesirable for several reasons. Despite their application potential, unbaffled vessels still lack fundamental information, due to the fact that only recently their capabilities have started being dug out. The lack of information on scale up effects is possibly the main reason hindering practical applications. In this work the influence of vessel size and liquid viscosity on the mass transfer performance in unbaf…
Modelling wet-air oxidation of phenol in a trickle-bed reactor using active carbon as a catalyst
2014
BACKGROUND Catalytic wet air oxidation (CWAO) of phenol in a trickle-bed reactor has been investigated (operating parameters: P=1.85 MPa, T=393, 413, 433 K, L=0.17–1.77 kg m−2 s−1 and G=0.2–0.62 kg m−2 s−1). Activated carbon was used as a catalyst. The experimental results have been simulated by Eulerian multifluid model (CFD) and for comparison by the plug flow model. RESULTS The experiments proved that active carbon can be applied as a catalyst in the phenol oxidation processes revealing a catalytic activity comparable with that of commonly used metal oxides. The highest conversion of phenol obtained in long-lasting experimental runs carried out at stable catalytic activity (PO2 = 0.31 MP…
Preparation of novel high permeability and antifouling polysulfone-vanillin membrane
2020
International audience; A novel high-performance nanofiltration membrane was fabricated by a simple and scalable route involving in situ cross-linking of hydrophilic, cheap, and environmentally friendly vanillin as antifouling agent with polysulfone (PSf) for salt rejection performance. Vanillin acts as a porogen, which induces a negative surface charge on the membrane surface due to the presence of polar functional groups like alcohol and aldehyde. The surface properties, including charge, morphology, and hydrophilicity, were investigated in detail using analytical instruments. The nanofiltration performance of the fabricated PSf-vanillin membranes was dependent on the percentage of vanill…
Direct numerical simulations of creeping to early turbulent flow in unbaffled and baffled stirred tanks
2018
Abstract It has been known for a long time that the fluid flow and several global quantities, such as the power and pumping numbers, are about the same in baffled and unbaffled mechanically stirred vessels at low Reynolds numbers, but bifurcate at some intermediate Re and take drastically different values in fully turbulent flow. However, several details are not yet completely understood, notably concerning the relation of this bifurcation with the flow features and the transition to turbulence. In order to shed light on these issues, computational fluid dynamics was employed to predict the flow field in two vessels stirred by a six-bladed Rushton turbine at Reynolds numbers from 0.2 to 600…
GIS-data related route optimization, hierarchical clustering, location optimization, and kernel density methods are useful for promoting distributed …
2019
Currently, geographic information system (GIS) models are popular for studying location-allocation-related questions concerning bioenergy plants. The aim of this study was to develop a model to investigate optimal locations for two different types of bioenergy plants, for farm and centralized biogas plants, and for wood terminals in rural areas based on minimizing transportation distances. The optimal locations of biogas plants were determined using location optimization tools in R software, and the optimal locations of wood terminals were determined using kernel density tools in ArcGIS. The present case study showed that the utilized GIS tools are useful for bioenergy-related decision-maki…
Microwave-assisted catalytic esterification of α-glucoisosaccharino-1,4-lactone with tall oil fatty acids
2016
Background: Carbohydrates-rich materials are partly degraded during alkaline kraft pulping into a complex mixture of aliphatic carboxylic acids consisting of α-glucoisosaccharinic acid as one of the main acids. On the other hand, crude tall oil, containing significant amounts fatty acids, is obtained as a by-product from kraft pulping. One interesting novel approach is to utilize chemically both these side-streams by producing renewable surfactants from aliphatic carboxylic acids and fatty acids via esterification. Results: In this paper, lauric (C12:0) and oleic (C18:1) acids as well as a mixture of tall oil fatty acids were esterified with α-glucoisosaccharino-1,4-lactone in a microwave-a…
Extraction of thermal characteristics of surrounding geological layers of a geothermal heat exchanger by 3D numerical simulations
2016
Ground thermal conductivity and borehole thermal resistance are key parameters for the design of closed Ground-Source Heat Pump (GSHP) systems. The standard method to determine these parameters is the Thermal Response Test (TRT). This test analyses the ground thermal response to a constant heat power injection or extraction by measuring inlet and outlet temperatures of the fluid at the top of the borehole heat exchanger. These data are commonly evaluated by models considering the ground being homogeneous and isotropic. This approach estimates an effective ground thermal conductivity representing an average of the thermal conductivity of the different layers crossed by perforation. In order …
Unsteadiness and transition to turbulence in woven spacer filled channels for Membrane Distillation
2017
To characterize the performance of Membrane Distillation (MD) modules, channels filled with woven spacers were investigated by Computational Fluid Dynamics (including Direct Numerical Simulations and the use of the SST k-Ï turbulence model) and by parallel experiments with Thermochromic Liquid Crystals. The cases considered here regard mutually orthogonal filaments with a spacer pitch to channel height ratio P/H=2, two spacer orientations θ with respect to the main flow (0° and 45°), and bulk Reynolds numbers Re from â¼200 to â¼2000, an interval of great interest in practical MD applications. For both values of θ, CFD predicted steady-state flow for Re up to â¼300, and chaotic flow …
Influence of the boundary conditions on heat and mass transfer in spacer-filled channels
2017
The purpose of this study is to discuss some problems which arise in heat or mass transfer in complex channels, with special reference to the spacer-filled channels adopted in membrane processes. Among the issues addressed are the consistent definition of local and mean heat or mass transfer coefficients; the influence of the wall boundary conditions; the influence of one-side versus two-side heat/mass transfer. Most of the results discussed were obtained by finite volume CFD simulations concerning heat transfer in Membrane Distillation or mass transfer in Electrodialysis and Reverse Electrodialysis, but many of the conclusions apply also to different processes involving geometrically compl…