CFD analysis for U extraction in a centrifugal contactor

Sano, Yuichi   ; Sakamoto, Atsushi  ; Kofuji, Hirohide  ; Takeuchi, Masayuki 

The effect of operational condition of the annular centrifugal contactor (ACC) on U extraction behavior was investigated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis considering mass transfer between aqueous and organic phases, and the calculation results were validated experimentally. The CFD analysis with ANSYS FLUENT was carried out using the Eulerian multi-fluid approach with a standard k- turbulence model. In order to calculate the droplet size of the dispersed phase and mass transfer between aqueous and organic phases, user-defined functions (UDF) were created. The changes of U extraction performance, i.e. U stage efficiency, with the rotor speed and the O/A ratio (= organic flowrate / aqueous flowrate) were calculated, and these showed a good agreement with experimental results.