Numerical Simulation of Liquid-Liquid Mixing in Single Screw Extruder by the Immiscible Lattice Gas Model

摘要

The mixing process is used by a lot of process industries, and the purpose is various. Therefore, it is extremely important to understand the flow and the mixing property to achieve one. A numerical simulation is one of the effective method to understand these properties. However, there are many cases that the simulation is difficult to apply especially for the complicated geometries. Recently, the lattice gas automata method has been developed to solve this problem. This method gives rise to macroscopic dynamics by using the simple idealized microscopic dynamics, and has some models corresponding to cases. Especially, the FHP model is the technique that the single-phase incompressible fluid can be simulated, and the 1LG model that FHP model was expanded is the technique that the flow behavior of liquid-liquid system that interfacial tension functions macroscopically can be simulated. In this work, we tried to apply the 1LG model of the lattice gas automata method to simulate the mixing section of a single-screw extruder, which is one of the most important equipment in polymer processing. The simulated result by the 1LG model was found to be able to presume the dead space and the non-mixing area in the single screw extruder.