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Flow of Non-Newtonian fluids through a vortex-based hydrodynamic cavitation device
Date
2026-05
Abstract
Hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) is being increasingly used for a variety of industrially relevant processes such as biomass pretreatment, emulsions, and crystallization. Many of these processes involve non-Newtonian fluids. However, most of the previous studies on characterizing flow in cavitating devices focus on low-viscosity, Newtonian fluids. In this study, we investigate the influence of non- Newtonian, particularly shear-thinning behavior of fluids on the flow characteristics and cavitation inception in a vortex-based hydrodynamic cavitation device (VD) using both experiments and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Primary digestate from an anaerobic digester was considered as a model non-Newtonian fluid, considering increasing applications of HC devices for biomass pretreatment. The non-Newtonian behavior was represented using the Carreau rheological model. The parameters of the model were obtained via rheological measurements over a shear rate range of 10 to 1300 s−1 of two digestate slurries containing 50% (v/v) and 77% (v/v) with water. The case of water was used as the reference case. A three dimensional (3D) CFD simulation of flow in VD was performed by using the Eulerian mixture model. The SST k−ω turbulence model and the Singhal cavitation model were used. Simulations were validated by comparing the simulated pressure drop across VD with the experimental measurements. Simulation results show that the 50% (v/v) and 77% (v/v) digestate slurries exhibit a reduction in swirl intensity in the vortex chamber and a delayed cavitation inception compared with the reference case of water. The results were analyzed to bring out the influence of higher effective viscosity and non-Newtonian behavior on the flow characteristics of VD. The presented results will be useful for designing VD for high-viscosity applications in waste valorization.
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Published as part of ACS Engineering Au special issue “CIBIQ2025 Symposium on CFD in Chemical Engineering
Publisher
American Chemical Society
Citation
ACS Engineering Au
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Upadhyay_2026_Flow.pdf
Adobe PDF, 4.5 MB
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Sustainable Development Goals
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Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International