Numerical simulation of swirling flows in oxidation reactors for TiO2 manufacture

The oxidation reactor plays a key role in producing rutile titanium dioxide (TiO2) from vapor-phase titanium tetrachloride (TiCl4) by employing a swirling flow operation for enhanced gas mixing. This work aims to understand the effect of reactor configuration on the 3-D swirling flow field using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. Considering the anisotropic turbulence involved, the Reynolds stress model is applied to describe the complex swirling flow together with the cross-flow mixing of gases. The results show significant effect of the flow angle between the wall jet of air stream (representing TiCl4 in practice) and the axial direction on the initial flow field of cross-flow mixing, where 60° gives smooth profiles of axial velocity development while 90° may provide the fastest mixing between the jet and the axial bulk flow. The pipe shape for the reaction and developing zone, i.e., straight, expanding and shrinking, shows slight influence on the hydrodynamics.