Investigation of turbulent mixing in a confined planar‐jet reactor

Abstract The velocity and concentration fields in a liquid‐phase confined planar‐jet reactor were measured using particle image velocimetry (PIV) and planar laser‐induced fluorescence (PLIF). Measurements were taken at downstream distances from the jet splitter plates of 0, 1, 4.5, 7.5, 12, and 15 jet widths for a Reynolds number of 50,000 based on the hydraulic diameter of the test section. The velocity and concentration field data were analyzed for such flow statistics as mean velocity, Reynolds stresses, turbulent kinetic energy, and scalar mean and variance. The turbulence dissipation rate was also estimated based on a large‐eddy PIV approach using the strain‐rate tensors computed from velocity fields and the subgrid scale (SGS) stress obtained from the Smagorinsky model. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models, including a two‐layer k–ϵ turbulence model, gradient‐diffusion models, and a scalar dissipation rate model, were validated against experimental data collected from this facility. The experimental and computational results were found to be in good agreement. © 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2005