Modeling shear-induced diffusion force in particulate flows

In this paper, a novel approach is presented to mechanistically model the dispersion of solid particles due to shear-induced diffusion effect. The model is based on the interfacial force concept, so that it is compatible with the ensemble averaged multifield model of multicomponent flows. Although the new model has been developed with membrane filtration processes in mind, the proposed shear-induced diffusion force formulation can be utilized to model a variety of industrial processes where particulates are present. The model has been verified against the other phenomenological models currently in use. The first part of this paper is concerned with theoretical aspects of model derivation. Then, a numerical analysis is presented to illustrate the application of the new model to dilute liquid/particle two-phase flows in tube membrane systems similar to those that are used for micro- and nano-filtration processes. The numerical simulations have been performed using a state of the art multiphase/multicomponent CFD code, NPHASE [Antal SP, Ettorre SM, Kunz RF, Podowski MZ. Development of a next generation computer code for the prediction of multicomponent multiphase flows. In: International meeting on trends in numerical and physical modeling for industrial multiphase flow, Cargese, France; 2000; Kunz RF, Yu WS, Antal SP, Ettorre SM. An unstructured two-fluid method based on the coupled phasic exchange algorithm. AIAA Paper 2001; 2001:2672]. The numerical consistency of the results of computer calculations have been verified against simplified semi-analytical approximations. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.