Analysis of the effect of flow position on homogeneity of lubrication in the blending circulation process using CFD

Abstract

Blending is the process of mixing of Base Oil and Additive to produce lubricating oil with the required specifications/characteristics. One of the determining factors to obtain the desired lubrication oil is the homogenization process. In this study, an analysis of the effect of the inlet position, circulation time, and flow velocity on the homogeneity of the resulting mixture was analyzed. The research method used is the computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation method with 2-dimensional (2D) fluent software. The flow that occurs in this condition is turbulent with the turbulent model used k-ε (epsilon). The results show that the upper inlet position within 10 minutes has gotten a homogeneous mixture compared to the lower inlet positions (30 minutes) and the center (20 minutes). Fluid flow velocity also affects the homogeneity of lubricating oil where the speed of 3 m/s within 10 minutes has obtained homogeneous results for all inlet positions compared to the velocity of 1.7 m/s and 2.5 m/s. In addition, the circulation time also affects the homogeneity level where for the lower inlet the circulation time needed to achieve homogeneity about 30 minutes. In conclusion, the longer the circulation time, the more homogeneous the mixture is obtained.