| Title |
Development and validation of a CFD-based model for simulating rotating drum separators |
| ID_Doc |
64210 |
| Authors |
Dimas, T; Eggers, A; Peeters, JR; Vanierschot, M |
| Title |
Development and validation of a CFD-based model for simulating rotating drum separators |
| Year |
2024 |
| Published |
Engineering Applications Of Computational Fluid Mechanics, 18, 1 |
| Abstract |
Within the context of the European Green Deal, recycling rates of plastics and metals are targeted to increase which will subsequently increase the requirements for high-quality recycled plastics and metals. The decisive step to achieve this high-quality recyclate lies in the sorting of the materials before their recycling. Density separation sorts materials based on their density difference from a liquid's density and is the most widely used separation technique in the industry because of its high cost-effectiveness. However, experimentally optimising a density separator would require a large amount of time and investment due to its large dimensions and the complex physical phenomena involved. Hence, the scope of this study is to develop a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model to investigate the fluid flow and trajectories of plastic particles in a density-separation-based rotating drum. This novel strategy and CFD model offer a tool capable of predicting the separation efficiency with an absolute error of 1-5%, depending on the polymer type, while reducing the computational time by a factor of 9. Moreover, the influence of air bubble attachments to the injected particles in the drum is observed and the inclusion of inter-particle collisions on the accuracy of the model is assessed. |
| PDF |
https://doi.org/10.1080/19942060.2024.2368606
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