Optimization of a Hydraulic Mixing Nozzle

Abstract

In industry, mixing tanks are used to homogenize two or more different products that have been combined. This work investigates the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to seek an enhanced design for a hydraulic mixing nozzle. This paper outlines a method for a numerical specification of a nozzle design and generation of a CFD model to analyze it. Characteristics that influence jet distance and trajectory, such as horn size, shape, and entrainment area, are reviewed. The relative importance of each of these traits and which traits have the most significant impact on the quality of a given design are explored. Suggestions for nozzle design are summarized. This information allows the most limiting factors of a tank mixing design to be mitigated to the largest extent possible. Currently industry uses magnification ratio (the ratio of flow out of the nozzle divided by the forced flow through the nozzle jet) for mixing tank nozzle design. This paper illustrates that using magnification ratio or velocity alone does not result in an optimized design. These factors must be weighted to obtain a design that balances these factors to mix the geometry of fluid volume. Additionally, this work shows that nozzle placement is perhaps more significant than nozzle design for optimum mixing with minimum power consumption.

Proper Orthogonal Decomposition-Based Reduced Order Model of a Hydraulic Mixing Nozzle

“…The objective function for the shape optimization was to obtain a uniform flow velocity at the outlet of the nozzle. Details about the evolutionary algorithm used and the CFD studies can be found in Englebrecht 4 . The profiles of the original and the optimized shape nozzles are shown in Fig.…”

“…Velocity Field Data collection and analysis similar to that performed for the original (baseline) nozzle in the previous section has also been performed on the best design nozzle obtained from the results of applying the evolutionary algorithm from Englebrecht 4 . The first nine singular values corresponding to the velocity magnitude of the ensemble matrix are shown in Table (2).…”

Experimental investigations of sugar concentration for counterflow jet mixing of drinks

“…In scientific and practical works [8][9][10][11][12], various designs of jet mixers are presented, which can be used in the production of sweet non-alcoholic drinks.…”

The role of information flow in engineering optimization

“…In the case of the real-valued problem in nine dimensions, the number of different solutions was increased by a factor of 9.6. When applied to a real world application of the sprayer nozzle (Engelbrecht, 2007), three times as many solutions were found despite using a small population size. These results support the theory that GBEAs enhance diversity in an evolving population.…”