Department of Aerospace Engineering

Computational Fluid Dynamics Seminar Series: Maulik Mehta: "Multiscale Modeling for TiO2 nanoparticle synthesis in turbulent flame"

Maulik Mehta

Maulik Mehta, CBE

Prof. Rodney Fox, Major Professor

Computational Fluid Dynamics Seminar Series

Tuesday, October 27, 2009
4:10 PM
1235 Howe Hall

Multiscale Modeling for TiO2 nanoparticle synthesis in turbulent flame

Titanium dioxide nanoparticles have widespread practical use in pigments, photocatalysis, and as catalyst support. These nanoparticles are manufactured in flame reactors, where precursors are injected into a pre-existing flame exposing the precursor to a high-temperature gas phase, leading to nucleation and particle growth. Gas-phase reactions, which lead to particle nucleation and surface growth events, and particle aggregation and sintering effects, are all important in determining the final product properties.  In absence of detailed chemistry the previous models have greatly simplified the process to a single reaction and are thus enable to capture the complexities introduced by the intermediates. The flow structure and turbulence are also of major importance as they determine species transport and reactant mixing, flame quenching, and particle properties such as polydispersity, morphology, homogeneity, and crystallinity. Thus, predictive modeling of this chemical process requires simultaneous development of detailed chemical mechanisms describing gas-phase combustion and particle evolution as well as advanced computational tools for describing the turbulent flow field and its interactions with the chemical processes. A reduced chemistry mechanism for gas-phase chemistry is developed to incorporate chemistry effects into a novel large-eddy simulation (LES) based computational tool for flame-based titanium dioxide synthesis.  Bio:Maulik Mehta
PhD Student in Chemical and Biological Engineering under Dr. Rodney O. Fox. 
Undergraduate from Banaras Hindu University.