Numerical Simulation of the Hydrodynamic Cavitation of the Impinging Streams Mixer

The impinging streams mixer is a new type micromixer. The cavitation phenomenon occurring in the mixers with T-shaped impinging streams (TS), conical impinging streams (CIS), vortex streams(VS) were investigated, respectively. The distribution of flow field in the mixer was simulated and calculated by commercial software Fluent 6.2.1. The results showed that under the same working conditions, a more obvious hydrodynamic cavitation may occur in the CIS type impinging stream than that in the CIS type or the VS type, and the vortex flow lead to an extension of the material residence time in the mixer. The distribution of turbulent kinetic energy and gas holdup were obtained by numerical simulating hydrodynamic cavitation under different entrance pressure conditions. It is showed that when the outlet pressure keeps a constant value, hydrodynamic cavitation can be enhanced by increasing the entrance pressure. The above research can be contributed to the producing of biodiesel and the solving of the key technical problem of oil and alcohol heterogeneous mixing.