CFD Modeling of a Stirred Anaerobic Digestion Tank for Evaluating Energy Consumption through Mixing
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Unit of Environmental Engineering, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
2
School of Environment, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran 13145-1384, Iran
3
Amsterdam UMC, 41883 Amsterdam, The Netherlands
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Jacek Mąkinia and Yongmei Li
Water 2021, 13(12), 1629; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13121629
Received: 15 April 2021 / Revised: 1 June 2021 / Accepted: 7 June 2021 / Published: 9 June 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Mathematical Modeling and Simulations of Wastewater Treatment Processes)
The anaerobic digestion process is an effective means to eliminate the detrimental impacts of cattle manure discharge into the environment, i.e., biochemical contamination and substantial methane emissions, the latter leading to global warming. For proper operation of anaerobic digesters, an efficient mixing provides a relatively homogenous mixture of the feedstock within the tank. This study aims to investigate the mixing process and the total energy consumption needed for stirring by using an asymmetrical mixer. A further objective is to analyze the formation of stagnant volume and the velocity gradient in the digester in order to assure the mixing efficiency of the mixer type. The computational model is implemented as the finite volume method, and the rheological properties of the feedstock are considered. The results are validated by comparing the on-site power consumption of the mixer with the values obtained by the numerical torque. At various mixer speeds, the dead volume does not exceed 0.5% of the digester tank; however, with the increase of the mixer rotation speed, the energy consumption of the mixer increases drastically.
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Keywords:
anaerobic digestion; computational fluid dynamics; dead volume; rheological fluid; stirred tank
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MDPI and ACS Style
Dabiri, S.; Noorpoor, A.; Arfaee, M.; Kumar, P.; Rauch, W. CFD Modeling of a Stirred Anaerobic Digestion Tank for Evaluating Energy Consumption through Mixing. Water 2021, 13, 1629. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13121629
AMA Style
Dabiri S, Noorpoor A, Arfaee M, Kumar P, Rauch W. CFD Modeling of a Stirred Anaerobic Digestion Tank for Evaluating Energy Consumption through Mixing. Water. 2021; 13(12):1629. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13121629
Chicago/Turabian StyleDabiri, Soroush, Alireza Noorpoor, Maziar Arfaee, Prashant Kumar, and Wolfgang Rauch. 2021. "CFD Modeling of a Stirred Anaerobic Digestion Tank for Evaluating Energy Consumption through Mixing" Water 13, no. 12: 1629. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13121629
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