Investigation of concentration variation of the components of a three-component gas mixtures in the radial and axial direction of a gas centrifuge machine under “total reflux flow” conditions by using the DSMC method

Abstract

In this paper, using a new combinatory meshing technique in the axisymmetric coordinate, a MCC-DSMC solver is introduced. Using this solver, the flow and the concentration variation inside a centrifuge machine in a rigid body rotation mode with the DSMC method for a variable hard sphere and a variable soft sphere models and for the mixing hydrogen, argon, and krypton gases are investigated. Our results are compared with the analytical solution. The results indicate that the two collision models are totally in agreement with each other, but the results have some differences with the analytical results obtained from the Boltzmann distribution function. The results show that the presence of the several gases with different molecular weights in a centrifuge shaped a multi-layered radial flow of gas inside the rotor, so that the heaviest gas in the area of the side wall of the rotor, the lightest gas in the region near the axis of the rotor and gases with the medium molecular mass were placed in a layer between them. Furthermore, the variation of the concentration for each component of the mixing gas in the axial direction is also investigated by the DSMC method, otherwise, that it is impossible to investigate it using the analytical solution of the Boltzmann distribution function.

Keywords

• multi-component gases
• gas centrifuge
• total reflux
• dsmc method