Proceedings of the Australian Combustion Symposium

November 6-8, 2013, The University of Western Australia

Design of an In-line Mixer for a Plug-Flow Reactor

J. Cochet, Y. Yang*, M.J. Brear,
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia
Abstract
A design of an in-line mixer for a plug-flow reactor (PFR) at the University of Melbourne is presented. The mixer operates in
turbulent flow to allow rapid mixing of fuel/nitrogen mixture with the cross-flow air. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
simulations are performed to compare the mixing efficiency for the orifice plate with two other common mixing approaches: internal
and external injection. From the numerical results, the orifice plate is demonstrated to be better than the other two approaches by a
wide margin. Besides the efficiency, other parameters have been taken into account for the design of the orifice plate, including
pressure drop, material stress and manufacturing feasibility.
Keywords: Plug-Flow Reactor, Mixer, Orifice plate, CFD

1.1 Design considerations

1. Introduction
With the declining supply of conventional light
crude oil, production of liquid transport fuels
increasingly relies on non-conventional oil sources (e.g.
oil sands and shale oils) as well as alternative fuels (e.g.
biofuels). Gaseous fuels, including natural gases and
liquid petroleum gases (LPG), have also found
increasing use in various types of combustion engines.
Understanding the combustion chemistry of these new
fuels and their blends with conventional fuels are
essential for using these resources to the best advantage.
A fundamental combustion experiment using a plug
flow reactor (PFR) is currently under design at the
University of Melbourne, for investigating fuel
autoignition chemistry at temperatures and pressures
representative of engine conditions. As a key process in
internal combustion engines, autoignition largely depend
on fuel chemical composition e.g. [1]. Plug flow reactors
have been used to study combustion mechanisms over
past 40 years [2-4,8]. Compared to other experiments,
PFRs
allow
detailed
species
concentrations
measurements at steady state conditions and provide
well defined boundary conditions for kinetic modelling.
Outcomes of this experiment have been widely used to
understand reaction chemistry to validate combustion
mechanisms [5].
This paper reports the design for a key component in
the PFR, the fuel/air mixer.
The overall design
considerations are first presented which is followed by
detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
calculations for comparison of several design options.

The reactor is designed for studying autoignition

chemistry of conventional and alternative fuels at
pressures up to 50 bar and temperatures up to 1000 K.
The primary design consideration is to match the
residence time of the gases in the reactor with the
reaction time. Iso-octane oxidation in air was used as a
reference to benchmark the reaction time, using the plug
flow reactor model in Chemkin [6] and the LLNL
mechanism [7]. At an equivalence ratio of =0.05, the
reaction times were determined based on 100% isooctane consumption at the end of the reactor length
(prescribed as 1000 mm). Matching the flow residence
time with this reaction time, the total mass flow rates
were then determined for a prescribed reactor diameter
of 25 mm. Based on these calculations and flow rates of
the available air compressor, the minimum and
maximum flow of 12 g/s and 60g/s were decided for 50
bar operation. The Reynolds number at these flow rates
were well above 10,000, ensuring turbulent flow in the
reactor.

1.2 Mixture preparation and mixer requirement

The fuel and air are preheated separately prior to
mixing. The air is heated to the reaction temperature, e.g.
1000 K; the fuel is pre-vaporized by hot N2 and then the
fuel/N2 mixture is kept at an intermediate temperature to
prevent both fuel condensation and pyrolysis, e.g. at 550
K. This heating-first mixing-later approach allows
rapid preparation of the fuel and air to the reaction
temperature, minimising reactions during the mixture
preparation stage compared to the alternative mixingfirst heating-later approach. However, proper design of
the mixer is critical for the chosen approach and rapid
and thorough mixing must be achieved. Three designs
have been explored, the performance of which are
examined using CFD calculations.

__________________________
* Corresponding author:
Phone: (+61) 3 83448104
Email: yi.yang@unimelb.edu.au

-1-

2. CFD Simulations
Existing PFR can be classified by their mixer into 2
categories: external injection as at Pennsylvania State
University [4] and internal injection as at Princeton and
Drexel Universities [3,8]. Figure 1 shows the geometry
of each setup in which mixing of the two gases is carried
out. Only the 12g/s case, where the velocity is lowest
and the mixing time is longest [9], is modelled as the
worst case scenario.

Figure 1: Schematic drawing of an external (top) and

internal (bottom) injection system.

2.1 Flow model and parameters

Simulations were performed using Comsol
Multiphysics [10], with the k- selected for modelling
the turbulence. Species mixing mechanism is driven by
diffusion with coefficient DN2air = 0.0357 cm2/s and the
Schmidt number equal to 0.2 [11]. Due to the low
concentrations of the fuel, the fuel/N2 stream is modelled
with pure N2 for simplicity.

2.2 Validation and verification

The numerical modelling was verified by simulating
the experiments of Smith in [12], with the results given
in Figure 2. Because Smith uses a cross flow of air to air
rather than nitrogen to air, the assumption that the
experimental diffusion of the jet was related to acetone
(tracer in the experiments) into air was made. Thus,
Smiths value of the diffusivity coefficient is used,
(Dacetoneair = 0.119 cm2/s) while the Schmidt number is
kept unchanged. The simulated jet trajectory and the
concentration profiles agree favourably with experiment.
The kidney shape can be observed in both experiment
and simulation.

Figure 2: Comparison of Smith's experiments and

Comsol calculations for (a) tracer concentration
along the cross jet (top - experiment, bottom calculation) and (b) tracer concentration at the cross
section of the cross flow 200 mm downstream of the
jet (left experiment, right - calculation).

2.3 Internal and external injections

Configurations of the internal and external injections
have both been optimised in terms of the number and the
diameter of the nitrogen jets, using theory and empirical
correlations [13-16], This optimisation process resulted
in 4 nozzles of 0.343 mm diameter each for the external
injection and 4 nozzles of 0.457 mm diameter each for
the internal injection. The length of both domains is
fixed to 100 mm and start from an initial radius of 8.7
mm to finish at a radius of 12.5 mm in the diffuser. Due
to their axisymmetry, 3 symmetry planes have been used
resulting in modelling 1/8 of the entire domain for each
model. The 3D computational mesh is unstructured and
consists of approximately 500 tetrahedral elements/mm3.
The geometry is meshed such that the grid size was
smallest at the nozzle tip and gradually increases in the
jet downstream direction.

The results of the simulations are shown in Figure 3,

showing the normalised concentration at different planes
along the devices. The presence of jets emerging from
the holes (plane A) can be clearly seen. It can also be
observed that both jets travel in the longitudinal direction
toward the outlet (plane D). As it flows through the
mixer, the jet width increases. In the external injection
case (Figure 3 - top), the jet is centred in the cross flow
of air.
The kidney shape however is not dissipated
throughout the entire length of the domain and can still
be observed on the plane D. In the internal case
however (Figure 3 - bottom), because the jet is overpenetrating (over-shooting) and impingement on the
outer wall can be observed, the disappearance of the
kidney shape is more clear.

near the wall. It was recognised that this problem might

be improved if the injection height of the fuel was set
lower so that the jet plume is closer to the centre of the
flow passing the injection cone. However, in this case,
the kidney shape will be less dissipated and so the
improvement is not expected to be substantial.

2.4 Orifice plate

2.4.1

Overall design

To substantially improve mixing, a greater number

of smaller injector holes was considered. This leads to
the orifice-plate design. In order to obtain improved
mixing efficiency, it is desired that each nozzle would
distribute the same mass flow rate of nitrogen. For that
purpose, choked flow is used where the nitrogen is
pressurised to 2 times of the air pressure (e.g., N2
pressure set to 100 bar when the reactor is operating at
50 bar).
Besides mixing, other design parameters are
considered. To avoid excessive consumption of nitrogen
during the experiment, the nozzles are laser drilled with
a diameter < 0.1 mm. Also, to avoid large pressure drop
across the plate, the air orifice diameters are chosen so
that the total pressure loss through the plate does not
exceed 1 bar [16]. Since the plate is subjected to severe
pressure and temperature gradients, an austenitic
refractory stainless steel (253MA) is chosen for its high
temperature creep strength and high resistance to
corrosion and oxidation. FEA simulations indicate
extended lifetime of the plate under the designed
operating conditions.

Figure 3: Contour plot of mixing region at various

axial locations for external injection (top) and
external injection (bottom).

The resulting orifice plate is depicted in Figure 4.

The plate is drilled with 21 1.75 mm holes, evenly
distributed over the disc surface, through which air flows
along the longitudinal axis. The disc includes 4 1
mm inlet through holes, extending radially from the
centre of the disc to the outer surface, allowing nitrogen
to exit via 12 holes with < 0.1 mm diameter, parallel to
the air holes. Having the same number of air holes
surrounding each nitrogen nozzle allows an equal
distribution of air over the nitrogen jets, while using the
more air holes near the wall avoids high fuel
concentrations near the tube wall.

The maximum and minimum normalised

concentrations shown in Figure 3 are defined as

cmax c fm
c fm

and

cmin c fm
c fm

cmax and cmin are the maximum and minimum

nitrogen concentrations on the plane, and c fm is the
where

nitrogen concentration for fully mixed conditions. The

concentrations range from +16% to -0.3% for the
internal injection and from +15% to -10% for the
external injection, indicating a better performance for the
former case. However, high fuel concentrations appear

Figure 4: Orifice plate schematic and simplification

method for CFD computation

2.4.2

CFD calculations

Figure 4 shows the computational domain for the

orifice plate. The large number of nozzles made it
feasible to model 1/48 of the orifice plate. This results in
a domain having the dimensions 1.58 1.58 23.7 mm.
The nitrogen jet is prescribed to be sonic. Due to the
smaller domain, the mesh is unstructured and consists of
approximately 6000 tetrahedral elements/mm3.
Figure 5 shows the cross sectional normalised
concentration at distances of 1 mm (A), 8 mm (B),
15 mm (C) and 22 mm (D) downstream of the plate.
It shows a more homogeneous nitrogen concentration,
less than 0.02% of the fully mixed value, before the end
of the domain. With nitrogen being injected around the
centre of the plate, the risk of impingement in the
surrounding wall, as seen in the internal injection case, is
reduced. This results in a shorter distance to accomplish
a homogeneous mixture, thus reducing of the mixing
time.

3. Conclusions
A design is reported for a mixer used to prepare the
fuel and air mixtures in a plug flow reactor. CFD
calculations were used to explore three design options.
Two more conventional designs utilising cross flow
injections were first explored and significant nonuniform concentrations were present downstream the
injection. An orifice plate with multi-point sonic
injections was then designed, which achieves a large
improvement in mixing compared to the two other
designs.

4. Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the ECR Grant of
the University of Melbourne, the Advanced Centre for
Automotive
Research
and
Testing
(ACART,
www.acart.com.au) and the Australian Research
Council.

5. References

Figure 5: Contour plot of mixing region at various

location within the orifice plate.
Figure 6 represents the log-scale evolution of the
normalised concentration along the domain length of
each design. By taking into account that the length of the
domain is reduced to 23.7 mm, 4 times less than the
internal and external approaches, the overall mixing
process is substantially improved.

Figure 6: Evolution of concentration range along the

device length.

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