Theoretical Analysis of the Velocity Profiles in a Diacell® Cell Applying Computational Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

The DiaCell® electrochemical reactor has been used in several processes such as disinfection without chorine addition, advanced oxidation processes and residual water treatment. The reactor design allows a modification of the configuration from 1 to 4 compartments, changing the effective reactor volume with separators of different sizes that are internal and parallel feed. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study of a DiaCell® reactor is needed to describe the detailed flow field and the velocity profiles at each step of the compartments. The CFD analysis is an important tool to scale up the process in a swift and efficient way. The theoretical analysis presented in this paper shows changes in the velocity profiles and flow distribution as a function of the width of the selected separators and the residence time of the cell for four different geometry configurations. The reactor configuration with two separators of 0.3 cm present the most even flow distribution. Furthermore, the analysis shows that it is possible to evaluate for each of the four different geometries where the flow is even and the section of the flow close to the electrode that it is not uniform.

Electrochemical degradation of surfactants in domestic wastewater using a DiaClean® cell equipped with a boron-doped diamond electrode

“…These results indicate that the degradation process is affected by increasing the flow rate because residence time and mass transfer are limited inside the reactor. It means that at very high flow rates, there is less residence time for water inside the reactor, which reduces the interaction of domestic wastewater with the oxidizing species formed on the surface of the BDD electrode ( Enciso et al, 2013 ). As a result, the optimal flow rate was determined to be 1.5 L min −1 , reaching 64.7% removal of surfactants and 48.7% COD removal after 6 h of electrolysis.…”