Abstract:

A fluid dynamics model of volume of fluid（VOF）was proposed to simulate the flow behavior in an Erlenmeyer shake flask with a volume of 250 ml liquid in combination with the RNG k-ε turbulence model.The numerical simulation was carried out by using a commercial computational fluid dynamics software，FLUENT，with the dynamic mesh（DM）technique.The effects of operation conditions of 5 different rotation speeds and 3 liquid loading volumes on the flow including liquid shape，height of liquid surface，gas-liquid interfacial area and the total surface area of liquid were investigated in the simulation.The effects of operation conditions on turbulent parameters（e.g.turbulent intensity，turbulent kinetic energy and turbulent dissipation rate），and on oxygen liquid-phase mass transfer coefficient，were also discussed.The results suggested that the parameters correlated to liquid shape were significantly influenced by rotation speed（N），and that the values of turbulent parameters increased with the increase of rotation speed（N），and decreased with the increase of liquid loading volume（V）in flask.The correlation between ε and N with V was obtained by non-linear regression.