| Annular centrifugal contactor, employing centrifugal extraction technology, has become one of the new separation equipments. This equipment has several outstanding advantages featuring compact structure, large capacity, high efficiency, low power consumption and convenient cleaning maintenance. Therefore, not only does it have amazing speed of development, but also been used in a wide range of applications, such as nuclear industry, pharmacy, metallurgy, petrochemical industry, and so on.This article utilized a combination of CFD numerical simulation and Pâ…£ test validation to systematically and deeply study the flow field both in the annular region and the rotor region of the annular centrifugal contactor. Subsequently, we revealed the morphology of Taylor vortex and its change processes in the annular region, discussed the different influences of various operating conditions (e.g. speed, flow, etc.) on the flow field of the annular region, indicated the phase distribution in the drum, the morphology of flow field, the change of three dimensional velocity field and pressure field, as well as the corresponding parameters which affect the flow characteristics. Moreover, the influence of vanes located at the bottom of drum on flow field and the lag phenomenon of angular velocity inside the rotor were also focused.We demonstrated that the rotating speed had a greater influence on the internal flow field, especially on the Taylor vortex flow in the annular region. In contrast, the influence of flow rate was small. More importantly, the obtained ideal operation condition was rotate speed of 1000 r/min, flow rate of around 60L/h. Besides, the vanes at the bottom had a significant effect on the flow field of the rotor entrance and the helical vane is more applicable. The angular velocity lag and advance appear in the rotor region, the rotating speed affects less on the angular velocity lag at the entrance while greatly in the inner cylinder. |
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