Population Balance and CFD Simulation of Particle Aggregation and Growth in a Continuous Confined Jet Mixer for Hydrothermal Synthesis of Nanocrystals

Abstract

Population balance and computational fluid dynamics models are built and integrated to carry out a simulation study of the reactive crystallisation process in a confined jet mixer (CJM) for the continuous flow synthesis of TiO2 nanoparticles at a supercritical water condition. In the population balance model, the crystal growth in size is modelled as being due to combined nanocrystal aggregation as well as surface growth. A free molecular model is used to predict the particle aggregation. The performance of the combined aggregation and surface growth models is compared with models that only consider surface growth as the only mechanism for particle size enlargement. It was found that the combined model gives a more accurate prediction of particle size distribution.

Keywords

• continuous hydrothermal flow synthesis of nanomaterials
• population balance model
• computational fluid dynamics
• TiO₂
• reactive crystallization