THREE-DIMENSIONAL CFD SIMULATION OF ZINC OXIDE SYNTHESIS BY GAS-PHASE REACTION

Abstract

In this thesis computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been employed to examine effect of temperature on zinc oxide (ZnO) synthesisis gas-phase reaction within a tubular reactor. Under this investigation, the temperature range was between 650 ˚C and 1,200 ˚C, while the range employed in experiments was between 900 ˚C and 1,100 ˚C. So far only few studies have experimentally investigated the effect of of temperature on the ZnO yield due to the limitations, such as cost, time, material and equipment. Meanwhile, CFD is recognized as an effective tool for analysis of effect of temperature on ZnO synthesis yield. Gas flow field was discretized into a three-dimensional cylindrical domain. The yields of zinc oxide with different temperature were simulated using FLUENT® software. The developed models were validated by comparing the simulated yield of ZnO with the experimental data reported in some previous works.For the effect of temperature on yields of zinc oxide, the simulation results revealed that the temperature strongly affected the ZnO yields with the temperature range between 650 and 1,100 ˚C and slightly affected the yields with the temperature higher than 1,100 ˚C.