A CFD study with analytical and experimental validation of laminar and turbulent mass-transfer in electrochemical reactors

Abstract

This work presents numerical simulations, with validation considering analytical expressions and experimental results, of masstransfer in electrochemical reactors under laminar and turbulent flows in ducts of rectangular and tubular shape. Sudden expansion at the reactor inlet and segmented electrodes are also analyzed. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were performed solving the laminar or RANS equations with the Shear Stress Transport (SST) k-ω turbulence model using the open source code OpenFOAMin steady-state. For mass-transfer simulations, the averaged diffusion-convection equation was implemented and solved. A good agreement between mass-transfer simulations with experimental data and analytical results were attained for both laminar and turbulent flow. Discussions about the segmented electrode technique in order to obtain local mass-transfer data in laminar and turbulent flow are also performed.