Frontiers in Engineering Science: Professor Jos Derksen

Frontiers in Engineering Science is the flagship monthly seminar program hosted by the School of Chemical and Process Engineering.

The latest research to influence the evolution of Chemical and Process Engineering is explored by eminent academics and industrialists invited from the global research community.  

Theme

Hydrodynamic interactions and mass transfer in suspensions – a particle’s perspective

Many chemical engineering processes rely on mass transfer between a solids phase and a liquid phase. Agitation and fluidization of dense solid-liquid suspensions are common ways of enhancing transfer rates. Slip velocities between the phases contribute to the transport of species towards and away from the solid-liquid interfaces. We present detailed simulations of flow dynamics and mass transfer in dense suspensions with explicit resolution of the solid-liquid interfaces. Challenges we face relate to the high Schmidt numbers usually associated with liquids which ask for dedicated numerical methods for sufficient resolution of the (fine) mass-transfer boundary layers, and to handling interactions between non-spherical particles in dense suspensions.