An Experimental Study of Structured Packing in High Pressure Services

Both distillation performance and hydrodynamic study for backmixing by tracer technique were carried out in a high-pressure packed column with 0.15 m inner diameter over a wide range of operating conditions. Isobutane and n-pentane are employed as test mixture in the distillation experiment and air/water is used for the hydrodynamic study. The column is installed with Mellapak 350Y structured packing and the total packing height is 2.0 m. With the increasing operating pressure, the separation efficiency increases slightly while the F-factor corresponding to the maximum efficiency at each pressure is descending. It is noted that, at all operating pressures, with the increase of F-factor, the packing efficiency is slightly higher up to the flooding point. The application of SRP model to high-pressure distillation gives much lower values of HTUOG than those obtained experimentally. An additional term, the height of mixing unit, is introduced to correct the SRP model and improve its accuracy at high pressure. From the tracer experiments, the height of mixing unit for gas phase was found to be larger than that for the liquid phase. From this viewpoint, it is believed that the gas phase backmixing gives more unfavorable influence on the separation efficiency in comparison with liquid phase.

Numerical study and acceleration of LBM-RANS simulation of turbulent flow

The coupled models of LBM （Lattice Boltzmann Method） and RANS （Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes） are more practical for the transient simulation of mixing processes at large spatial and temporal scales such as crude oil mixing in large-diameter storage tanks. To keep the efficiency of parallel computation of LBM, the RANS model should also be explicitly solved; whereas to keep the numerical stability the implicit method should be better for PANS model. This article explores the numerical stability of explicit methods in 2D cases on one hand, and on the other hand how to accelerate the computation of the coupled model of LBM and an implicitly solved RANS model in 3D cases. To ensure the numerical stability and meanwhile avoid the use of empirical artificial lim- itations on turbulent quantities in 2D cases, we investigated the impacts of collision models in LBM （LBGK, MRT） and the numerical schemes for convection terms （WENO, TVD） and production terms （FDM, NEQM） in an explic- itly solved standard k-e model. The combination of MRT and TVD or MRT and NEQM can be screened out for the 2D simulation of backward-facing step flow even at Re = 107. This scheme combination, however, may still not guarantee the numerical stability in 3D cases and hence much finer grids are required, which is not suitable for the simulation of industrial-scale processes.Then we proposed a new method to accelerate the coupled model of LBM with RANS （implicitly solved）. When implemented on multiple GPUs, this new method can achieve 13.5-fold accelera- tion relative to the original coupled model and 40-fold acceleration compared to the traditional CFD simulation based on Finite Volume （FV） method accelerated by multiple CPUs. This study provides the basis for the transient flow simulation of larger spatial and temporal scales in industrial applications with LBM-RANS methods.

Canonical logic units using bidirectional four-wave mixing in highly nonlinear fiber

All-optical canonical logic units at 40 Gb/s using bidirectional four-wave mixing(FWM) in highly nonlinear fiber are proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Clear temporal waveforms and correct pattern streams are successfully observed in the experiment. This scheme can reduce the amount of nonlinear devices and enlarge the computing capacity compared with general ones. The numerical simulations are made to analyze the relationship between the FWM efficiency and the position of two interactional signals.