Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics for Modeling of Hydrodynamics and Mass Transfer of Laboratory Scale Crude Palm Oil Degumming Process

Abstract

In this research, computational fluid dynamics was applied to model a laboratory reactor for the degumming of crude palm oil (CPO) involving immiscible liquid-liquid mixing and being controlled by mass transfer. The fluid mixing of CPO and phosphoric acid in the reactor was simulated using multiphase mixture model and standard κ-ε turbulence model in steady state mode. The simulation predicts the distributions of the drop diameter, the dispersed-phase relative velocity, the drop Reynolds number and the interfacial area density. The mass transfer coefficient from experimental work is correlated using the model as Sherwood number Shd = 0.02576 Red0.673Sc0.431 with R2 being 0.91. Finally, the volumetric mass transfer coefficient was calculated and compared to the experiment result.