Liquid Flow Field on Evaporator of Wiped Short Path Distillation——Experimental Results and Computer Simulation

Short path distillation (SPD) is a kind of high vacuum distillation method, which is suitable for the separation of high boiling, heat sensitivity and viscidity products.In this paper,through measuring the phase-averaged velocity distributions with a conditional sampling method of the particle imaging velocimetry (PIV), the liquid flow field that affects the heat and mass transfer of evaporating thin-film in an SPD evaporator is investigated.Measured results show that the flow velocities decrease rapidly apart from the wiper at different wiper velocities, the maximum velocity appears before wipers, and the quicker the wiping, the larger the flow velocity. Meanwhile, the evaluation of numerical calculations is carried out.The measured velocity distributions indicate clearly the effect of the wiper both on the flow field along its moving direction and on the vortices behind the wiper.Simulation data show that the performance of liquid flow field on the heating surface not only agrees with the experimental results well,but also can give further more information, such as the distribution of turbulent kinetic energy.In this study,turbulent kinetic energy mainly distributes before wipers and laminar flow appears far away from the wipers.