In this study, effects of nanoparticles, including 7 nm TiO2, 200 nm TiO2, and hydrophilic and hydrophobic SiO2 with mean diameter in the range of 15–20 nm and their concentration on the membrane properties and vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) performance were evaluated. The effect of membrane thickness and support materials were also investigated. The membranes were characterised extensively in terms of morphology (SEM), water contact angle, water liquid entrance pressure (LEPw), surface roughness, and pore size. While the best nanocomposite membranes with 200 nm TiO2 Nanoparticles(NPs) were obtained at 2% particle concentration, the optimal particle concentration was 5% when 7 nm TiO2 was integrated. Using nanocomposite membrane containing 2 wt% TiO2 – 200 nm nanoparticles, VMD flux of 2.1 kg/m2h and LEPw of 34 PSI was obtained with 99% salt rejection. Furthermore, it was observed that decreasing the membrane thickness would increase the portion of finger-like layer in membrane and reduce the spongy-like layer when hydrophilic nanoparticles were used. Using continuous flow VMD, a flux of 3.1 kg/m2h was obtained with neat PVDF membranes, which was 600% higher than the flux obtained by the static flow VMD with the same membrane at the same temperature and vacuum pressure. The fluxes of both static and flow-cell VMD increased with temperature. Furthermore, it was evident that the continuous flow VMD at 2 LPM yielded 300% or higher flux than static VMD at any given temperature, indicating strong effects of turbulence provided in the flow-cell VMD.

Modern gas turbine designs often include lean premixed combustion for its emissions benefits; however, this type of combustion process is susceptible to self-excited combustion instabilities that can lead to damaging heat loads and system vibrations. This study focuses on identifying a mechanism of combustion instability of a reacting jet in cross flow, a flow feature that is widely used in the design of gas turbine combustion systems. Experimental results from a related study are used to validate and complement three numerical tools that are applied in this study – self-excited Large Eddy Simulations, 3D thermoacoustic modeling, and 1D instability modeling. Based on the experimental and numerical results, a mechanism was identified that included a contribution from the jet in cross flow impedance as well as an overall jet flame time lag. The jet impedance is simply a function of the acoustic properties of the geometry while the flame time lag can be separated into jet velocity, equivalence ratio, and strain fluctuations, depending on the operating conditions and setup. For the specific application investigated in this study, it was found that the jet velocity and equivalence ratio fluctuations are important, however, the effect of the strain fluctuations on the heat release are minimal due to the high operating pressure. A mathematical heat release model was derived based on the proposed mechanism and implemented into a 3D thermoacoustic tool as well as a 1D instability tool. A three-point stability trend observed in the experimental data was correctly captured by the 3D thermoacoustic tool using the derived heat release model. Stability maps were generated with the 1D instability tool to demonstrate regions of stable operation that can be achieved as a function of the proposed mechanism parameters. The relative effect of the reacting jet in cross flow on the two dominant unstable modes was correctly captured in the stability maps. While additional mechanisms for a reacting jet in cross flow are possible at differing flow conditions, the mechanism proposed in this study was shown to correctly replicate the stability trends observed in the experimental tests and provides a fundamental understanding that can be applied for combustion system design.

The first goal of this work was to develop models based on nonlinear ordinary-differential equations or nonlinear algebraic equations, which produce the lift and drag coefficients on a cylinder or a cylinder-like structure. We introduced an improved wake oscillator for the lift, which combines the van der Pol and Duffing equations. We proposed a two-term quadratic model that relates the drag and lift coefficients, which reproduces the phase relationship between the drag and lift and its variation with the Reynolds number. We found that a mixed-type (external and parametric) forcing is needed to represent the effects of the cylinder motion. The second goal of this work was to develop a deeper understanding of the shedding and fluid forces on a cylinder and how they depend on its oscillatory motion within and outside the synchronization (or lock-in) band of frequencies. We performed extensive CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulations and solved the unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations that govern the flow fields around fixed and moving (in either the cross-flow or in-line direction) cylinders. We identified various wake modes that can exist, depending on the cylinder motion (direction, amplitude, and frequency) by using modern methods of nonlinear dynamics. The possible responses can be period-one, periodic with large period, quasiperiodic, or chaotic. Moreover, we found that the route to chaos is torus breakdown. We investigated how four frequency sweeps of the cross-flow motion affect the response curves and the hysteresis phenomenon. We studied in detail the effect of the in-line motion on the wake and related this effect to the reduction in the lift and mean drag due to a synchronization type that is very different from the one due to cross-flow motion. / Ph. D.

Yes / CO2 capture from natural gas was experimentally and theoretically studied using a dead-end polymeric permeation cell. A numerical model was proposed for the separation of CO2/CH4 using Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) in a flat sheet membrane module and developed based upon the continuity, momentum and mass transfer equations. The slip velocity condition was considered to show the reflection of gas flow in contact with the membrane surface. The solution method was based on the well-known SIMPLE algorithm and implemented using MATLAB to determine the velocity and concentration profiles. Due to change in velocity direction in the membrane module, the hybrid differencing scheme was used to solve the diffusion-convection equation. The results of the model were compared with the experimental data obtained as part of this work and good agreement was observed. The distribution of CO2 concentration inside the feed and permeate chambers was shown and the velocity profile at the membrane surface was also determined using reflection factor for polymericmembrane. The modelling result revealed that increasing the amount of CO2 in gas feed resulted in an increase in the CO2 in the permeate stream while the gas feed pressure increased. By changing the permeability, the model developed by use of the solution-diffusion concept could be used for all polymeric membranes with flat sheet modules.

<p> Two phase flow induced vibrations is a field that has many inherent modelling difficulties, making research in the area challenging. In order to study the problem more closely, a two phase flow loop using Freon 11 had been designed and commissioned at McMaster University. The initial design required some modifications to make the loop as "user friendly" as possible. The final result meets this desired capability. </p> <p> The loop was designed so that research into vibrations in tube bundles could be carried out. A test section had been designed to facilitate this task. However, this design also required modifications. Additionally, new vibration monitoring instrumentation making use of light was developed to avoid the detrimental effects of Freon 11. The introduction of these items has resulted in a complete facility for the purpose of studying two phase flow induced vibrations. Preliminary experiments revealed a problem relating to tube tuning. Generally, the results are promising and some interesting new phenomena were observed as well. </p> / Thesis / Master of Engineering (ME)

No description available.

<p>An experimental study was conducted to investigate damping and fluidelastic instability in tube arrays subjected to two-phase cross-flow. The purpose of this research was to improve our understanding of these phenomena and how they are affected by void fraction and flow regime. The model tube bundle had 10 cantilevered tubes in a parallel-triangular configuration, with a pitch ratio of l.49. The two-phase flow loop used in this research utilized Refrigerant 11 as the working fluid, which better models steam-water than air-water mixtures in terms of vapour-liquid mass ratio as well as permitting phase changes due to pressure fluctuations. The void fraction was measured using a gamma densitometer, introducing an improvement over the Homogeneous Equilibrium Model (HEM) in terms of void fraction, density and velocity predictions. Three different damping measurement methodologies were implemented and compared in order to obtain a more reliable damping estimate. The methods were the traditionally used half-power bandwidth, the logarithmic decrement and an exponential fitting to the tube decay response. The decay trace was obtained by "plucking" the monitored tube from outside the test section using a novel technique, in which a pair of electromagnets changed their polarity at the natural frequency of the tube to produce resonance. The experiments showed that the half-power bandwidth produces higher damping values than the other two methods. The primary difference between the methods is cam,ed by tube frequency shifting, triggered by fluctuations in the added mass and coupling between the tubes, which depend on void fraction and flow regime. The exponential fitting proved to be the more consistent and reliable approach to estimating damping. In order to examine the relationship between the damping ratio and mass flux, the former was plotted as a function of void fraction and pitch mass flux in an iso-contour plot. The results showed that damping is not independent of mass flux, and its dependency is a function of void fraction. A dimen~; ional analysis was carried out to investigate the relationship between damping and two-phase flow related parameters. As a result, the inclusion of surface tension in the form of the Capillary number appears to be useful when combined with the twophase component of the damping ratio (interfacial damping). A strong dependence of damping on flow regime was observed when plotting the interfacial damping versus the void fraction, introducing an improvement over the previous result obtained by normalizing the two-phase damping, which does not exhibit this behaviour. The interfacial velocity model was selected to represent the fluidelastic data in two-phase experiments, due to the inclusion of the tube array geometry and density ratio effects, which does not exist for the pitch velocity approach. An essential component in reliably establishing the velocity threshold for fluidelastic instability, is a measure of the energy dissipation available in the system to balance the energy input from the flow. The present analysis argues that the damping in-flmv is not an appropriate measure and demonstrates that the use of quiescent fluid damping provides a better measure of the energy dissipation, which produces a much more logical trend in the stability behaviour. This value of damping, combined with the RAD density and the interfacial velocity, collapses the available data well and provides the expected trend of two-phase flow stability data over the void fraction range from liquid to gas flows. The resulting stability maps represent a significant improvement over existing maps for predicting fluiclelastic instability of tube bundles in two-phase flows. This result a1so tends to confirm the hypothesis that the basic mechanism of fluidelastic instability is the same for single and two-phase flows.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

O processo de microfiltração tangencial com membranas tubulares inorgânicas e tubos microporosos, respectivamente de origem importada e nacional, foi investigado tendo-se como objeto de separação as misturas macromoleculares preparadas com os agentes polissacarídeos gomas Xantana e Guar em suspensão aquosa. São evidenciados neste processo os efeitos de sinergia compreendidos nas misturas elaboradas puras e em diferentes proporções, na concentração final de 1000 ppm. A investigação experimental acompanha o comportamento reológico de cada mistura ao longo do processo e os resultados foram investigados a partir de propriedades físico-químicas relevantes como: concentração de carbono orgânico total (Total Organic Carbon - TOC) e análise de absorbância no espectômetro de infravermelho. Resultados de TOC indicaram que em apenas um meio filtrante tubular microporoso (C1T+), o desempenho do processo na retenção dos polissacarídeos foi acima de 90%, em relação ao processo com a membrana comercial importada cuja retenção de TOC foi da ordem de 80%. De acordo com as análises de absorbância, conclui-se que as membranas com tamanho do poro nominal de 0,2 \'mü\'m e 0,4 \'mü\'m tiveram uma retenção mais eficiente do que os tubos microporosos em estudo. A temperatura foi um parâmetro significativo, pois a retenção, na maioria dos casos, foi maior na temperatura de 25ºC, independente da pressão e da velocidade média. Na análise dos procedimentos envolvendo cada mistura, foi constatada a boa sinergia entre as gomas, sem modificação de estrutura (formação de gel) ou fenômenos de superfície que impedissem o processo de microfiltração. A vazão transmembrana das misturas ficou limitada entre os máximos valores para mistura pura de Xantana e mínimos para Guar. Todas as misturas apresentaram comportamento pseudoplástico, sem mudanças na reologia, reforçando a adequada sinergia quanto a este aspecto. / The present dissertation reports cross-flow microfiltration with national and imported inorganic tubular membranes and microporous tubes. The object of separation is the macromolecular mixtures prepared with polysaccharide agents Xanthan and Guar gum in aqueous solution. The process shows the synergism effects in pure and different mixture proportions, with 1000 ppm final concentration. The experiments established the rheologic behaviour of each mixture along the process and significant physical and chemical properties, such as Total Organic Carbon concentration (TOC) and absorbency analysis in infrared spectrometer were analyzed. TOC retention shows that only one microporous tubular filtering medium (C1T+) had better performance (retention 90%) than the imported commercial membrane (retention about 80%). Absorbency analysis show a better retention efficiency of membranes with pore size of 0,2 \'mü\'m and 0,4 \'mü\'m than microporous tube. The temperature was a significant parameter, as the better retention was obtained at 25ºC, independently of pressure and mean velocity. There is good synergism between Xanthan and Guar gums without structure modifications or surface phenomena that would impede the microfiltration process. The transmembrane flux of proportional mixtures has been limited between maximum values of pure Xanthan and minimum values of pure Guar mixtures. All mixtures have pseudoplastic behaviour, without changes in rheology, intensifying the good synergism.

Nesta tese de doutorado é utilizada a técnica híbrida analítico-numérica, conhecida internacionalmente por GITT (Generalized Integral Transform Technique), para modelagem e simulação da equação de conservação das espécies químicas, na investigação do escoamento laminar incompressível, newtoniano e permanente em tubos permeáveis. O escoamento é aplicado ao processo de filtração tangencial com membranas e foram realizados dois estudos relacionados à equação convectiva-difusiva elíptica e parabólica, para as quais são utilizadas as mesmas condições de fronteira. Na modelagem a velocidade na parede permeável é considerada uniforme e os perfis de velocidade para a região de entrada do escoamento são obtidos na literatura. O modelo matemático utiliza originalmente uma expressão para a espessura da camada limite de concentração, com uma metodologia que determina a taxa assintótica, com a qual se estabelece a espessura da camada de concentração. Os resultados são apresentados com análise de convergência através de tabelas e com gráficos para o fluxo transmembrana local e médio, a correlação de Sherwood e a espessura da camada limite de concentração e ainda são comparados com outros resultados e metodologias reportadas na literatura. / In this doctoral thesis, the analytical-numerical hybrid technique, internationally known as GITT (Generalized Integral Transform Technique), is used for the modeling and simulation of the equation of chemical species conservation, in the investigation of the incompressible, Newtonian and permanent laminar flow in permeable tubes. The flow is applied to the cross-flow process with membranes and two studies related to the elliptic and parabolic convective-diffusive equation were accomplished, for which the same boundary conditions are used. In the modeling, the velocity on the permeable wall is considered uniform and the velocity profiles for the entrance region flow are obtained from the literature. The mathematical model originally uses an expression for the concentration boundary layer thickness, with a methodology that determines the asymptotic ratio, establishing the concentration boundary layer thickness. The results are presented with convergence analysis through tables and with graphs for the mean local transmembrane flux, Sherwood correlation and the concentration boundary layer thickness, and they are also compared with other results and methodologies reported in the literature.

Three-dimensional large-eddy simulations (LES) of single and multiple jets in cross-flow (JICF) were conducted using the 19-bit Lattice Boltzmann Equation (LBE) method coupled with a conventional Navier-Stokes (NS) finite-volume scheme. In this coupled LBE-NS approach, the LBE-LES was employed to simulate the flow inside jet nozzles, while the NS-LES was used to simulate the cross-flow. The key application area was to study the micro-blowing technique (MBT) for drag control similar to recent experiments at NASA/GRC. A single jet in the cross-flow case was used for validation purposes, and results were compared with experimental data and full LBE-LES simulation. Good agreement with data was obtained. Transient analysis of flow structures was performed to investigate the contribution of flow structures to the counter-rotating vortex pair (CRVP) formation. It was found that both spanwise roller (at the lee side of the jet) and streamwise vortices (at the jet-side) contribute to the generation of the CRVP. Span-wise roller at the corner of the jet experiences high spanwise vortex compression as well as high streamwise vortex stretch. As a result, they get realigned, mix with the jet-side streamwise vortices, and eventually generate the CRVP. Furthermore, acoustic pulses were used to test the proper information exchange from the LBE domain to the NS domain, and vice-versa. Subsequently, MBT over a flat plate with porosity of 25 percent was simulated using nine jets in a compressible cross-flow at a Mach number of 0.4. Three cases with injection ratios of 0.003, 0.02 and 0.07 were conducted to investigate how the blowing rate impacts skin friction. It is shown that MBT suppressed the near-wall vortices and reduced the skin friction by up to 50 percent. This is in good agreement with experimental data.