Experimental study of turbulent mixing in a rectangular reactor

The velocity and concentration fields in a liquid-phase confined planar-jet reactor were measured using particle image velocimetry (PIV) and planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF). Measurements were taken at downstream distances from the jet splitter plates of 0, 1, 4.5, 7.5, 12, and 15 jet widths for a Reynolds number of 50,000 based on the distance between two sidewalls of the test section. The velocity and concentration field data were analyzed for such flow statistics as mean velocity, Reynolds stresses, turbulent kinetic energy, and scalar mean and variance. The turbulence dissipation rate was also estimated based on a large-eddy PIV approach using the strain-rate tensors computed from velocity fields and the sub-grid scale (SGS) stress obtained from the Smagorinsky model. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models including a two-layer k — e turbulence model, gradient-diffusion models and a scalar dissipation rate model were validated against experimental data collected from this facility. The experimental and computational results were found to be in good agreement.