On the Importance of Mixing for the Production of Nanoparticles

Part of the 1st International Conference on Industrial Processes for Nano and Micro Products, London, 2007.

The precipitation process of nanoparticles of barium‐sulphate in a confined impinging jet reactor (CIJR) is here modelled by means of a precipitation model based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The micromixing was described with the interchange by exchange with the mean model coupled with the direct quadrature method of moments algorithm (DQMOM‐IEM), and the population balance equation (PBE), which describes the nucleation, growth and aggregation steps, was solved with the approach of the quadrature method of moments (QMOM). In this work preliminary results for the validation of the model are presented.

Keywords:

• Nanoparticle, precipitation, confined impinging jet reactor, computational fluid dynamics, population balance equation

The authors acknowledge the important contributions of Federica Furcas for CFD simulations. The financial contribution of the Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research is also gratefully aknowledged for the fellowship of one of the authors (E. Gavi).

Notes

Part of the 1st International Conference on Industrial Processes for Nano and Micro Products, London, 2007.