Numerical study of the agglomerates dispersion behavior in shear and elongational media using Population Balance Modeling (PBM)

In particulate systems, formation and fragmentation of agglomerates/ aggregates are the major phenomena in the case of dynamic processing of suspensions. In the present work, the dispersion of the agglomerates has been studied in Shear Flow Fields (SFF) and Elongational Flow Fields (EFF) using population balance Method. Since there is no direct data on EFF, predicted data obtained through Discrete Element Method has been used to obtain a proper breakup kernel for EFF. So, a power-law breakup kernel is proposed for EFF and an exponential one is considered for SFF. It has been shown that increasing the intensity of deformation rate in both ow elds, speeds up the breakup process and the mean aggregate/agglomerate sizes shift toward the ner ocs. This eect is more pronounced for SFF showing more sensitivity to the deformation rate. It has been concluded that because of the ability of EFF in agglomerate breakup, it would break the agglomerates even in lower deformation rate. Since agglomerate could rotate in SFF, the nal agglomerate size would show more dependency on the deformation rate. Results depict that EFF leads to broader agglomerate size distribution in comparison with SFF. The nal fragment size shows more dependency to the agglomerates structure in SFF compared to EFF.