Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair

Ismail B. Celik

Committee Co-Chair

Wade W. Huebsch

Committee Member

John M. Kuhlman

Abstract

Bottom heating approach for glass melting offers potential benefits of higher efficiency and lower emissions compared to the conventional surface fired melters with burners above the bath surface. Recent advances in the enabling technologies such as burners, controls, heat recovery and refractive materials have led to successful demonstration of bottom heating Submerged Combustion Melting (SCM) of glass. In the reactor, combustion products of natural gas combustion are bubbled through the three phase recirculating tank reactor. The turbulence generated by the rising bubble column causes rapid heating and mixing of the charge resulting in fast melting and homogeneous composition of the product. Detailed understanding of such two-phase gas liquid flows is imperative for developing efficient multi-phase reactors through precise control of mixing and reaction kinetics. The bubble column, is a good apparatus for an elementary experimental study and numerical modeling of such flows. In this study, the hydrodynamics of the bubble column are investigated to develop strategies for assessment of mixing in the system. For the numerical part two approaches are used:;i) Using a commercial software ANSYS FLUENT with an Eulerian-Eulerian approach to model the bubble and the continuous phase and.;ii) Using an in house LES based Navier-Stokes solver with the Eulerian-Lagrangian method which uses the Particle-in-Ball approach for the Lagrangian particle tracking of the discrete phase (bubbles).;The efficacy of these methods in predicting the plume oscillation period (POP) over a wide range of superficial gas velocities is studied. An attempt is made to simulate the effect of viscosity on such flows. An unheated laboratory scale model with a very viscous primary phase is used for experiments, to better understand the effect of viscosity on the hydrodynamics of the bubbles rising and by extension the mixing obtained in the system.

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