Augmented CFD-PBM Simulation of Liquid-Liquid Two-Phase Flows in Liquid Extraction Columns with Wettable Internal Plates

In this study, augmented computational fluid dynamic-population balance model (CFD-PBM) simulations were carried out to predict hydrodynamics in pulsed disc and doughnut columns (PDDC) with wettable internal plates. The droplet breakage and droplet-liquid layer interaction submodels were integrated to construct an augmented PBM, which was embedded in the CFD to calculate droplet-size distributions (DSD). It was found that the augmented PBM-predicted DSDs are better than the PBM with only the breakage submodel. The influences arising from the wettability of internal plates should be carefully considered. In a pilot-scale PDDC with wettable internal plates, the augmented CFD-PBM simulation results indicated that the shape of DSDs changed little with an increase in the throughput from 80 to 200 L/(dm(2).h), but was significantly influenced by the pulsation intensity as it increased from 0.0065 to 0.0125 m/s.