Commissioning a commercial laser induced fluorescence system for characterization of static mixer performance

Date of Award

2017

Degree Name

M.S. in Chemical Engineering

Department

Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering

Advisor/Chair

Advisor: Kevin J. Myers

Abstract

Turbulent mixing with a static mixer is studied using the Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF) technique. In this study, a comparison of the blending effectiveness with and without the static mixer is drawn. The blending efficiency of the mixer is quantified by coefficient of variation (CoV), where a value of 0.05 signifies very good mixing. The lower the value of CoV, the better the blending quality. Two types of CoV, instantaneous and time-averaged, are determined to study the blending quality. For industrial purposes, the time-averaged CoV is typically used to characterize the mixing system. Data is collected at different Reynolds numbers and different distances from the point of injection of the dye. A commercial laser imaging software, DaVis, is used for the analysis of the data. The study shows that the software uses a different approach than what is expected to calculate the average instantaneous CoV which is incorrect and lower than the time-averaged CoV. A macro developed by Casselbury (2016) is adopted to calculate the average instantaneous CoV. Results show that mixing quality increased with increase in flow rate or mixing length. Also, the CoV values for tests with the static mixer are found to be lower than the empty pipeline which indicated that better mixing is achieved when the static mixer is used.

Keywords

Laser-induced fluorescence, Mixing machinery Testing, Composite materials Quality control, Chemical Engineering, Laser Induced Fluorescence, Flow Visualization, Coefficient of Variation, Static Mixers

Rights Statement

Copyright © 2017, author

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