CFD analysis of reactive crystallisation in stirred tanks : a focus on nickel hydroxide

• Main Author: Krige, Andrew Richard
• Other Authors: Petrie, Jim
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: University of Cape Town 2014
• Subjects: Chemical Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/5303

Includes bibliographical references. === The recovery of metal values from aqueous streams via precipitation, or reactive crystallisation, is both an economically and environmentally significant unit operation in a wide spectrum of industries. However, the control and operability of these systems is hampered by the limited fundamental basis for their design, frequently resulting in downstream processing difficulties. Previous work by Dustan (2001) considered precipitaion and subsequent dewatering as an integral system, and quantified, to a first order, the relationship between the various sub-processes. The current study is aimed at further resolving the upstream components of this intergrated model (i.e. the precipitation itself), with a particular focus, due principally to the rapid kinetics typically exhibited by precipitaion systems, on mixing and representation of time-dependent spatial inhomogeneities.