Abstract
Nowadays electrical waste (EW) recycling has become a practical way to provide raw material for new devices. Computer parts such as memory, motherboard or other parts contain large amount of metals from which the recovery of precious metals and copper represents the highest economical potential. With a proper chemical treatment these metals can be efficiently extracted and separated from the actual waste. For this task a specially designed leaching reactor, equipped with a perforated rotating drum, was used. This work is aimed at investigating if computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools can be efficiently applied to model the chemical reactor used to dissolve the metals from the EW. First a hybrid CFD-compartment approach was developed to describe the dissolution process in the leaching reactor while the CFD models were used to model the hydrodynamics of the process. Based on the detailed model containing momentum and component mass balance the developed simulator could be used to enhance the performance of the existing reactor system. For the modelling studies COMSOL Multiphysics was used as CFD software.
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Abbreviations
- A :
-
Solid surface (m2)
- C B :
-
Equipment base cost ($)
- C E :
-
Equipment cost ($)
- CE1 :
-
Equipment cost in year 1 ($)
- CE2 :
-
Equipment cost in year 2 ($)
- c i :
-
Molar concentration (mol m−3mol/m3)
- c in,i :
-
Inlet concentration (mol m−3mol/m3)
- c out,i :
-
Outlet concentration (mol/ m−3)
- E ai :
-
Activation Energy [J/ (mol−1K)]
- F in,i :
-
Inlet flow rate (m3/ s−1)
- f M :
-
Correction factor for materials of construction (1)
- F out,i :
-
Outlet flow rate (m3 /s−1)
- f P :
-
Correction factor for design pressure (1)
- f T :
-
Correction factor for design temperature (1)
- INDEX1 :
-
Cost index in year 1 (1)
- INDEX2 :
-
Cost index in year 2 (1)
- k 0i1 :
-
Pre-exponential constants (m(1·ni) mol(1 − ni) s−1)
- k i :
-
Reaction rate constants (m(1·ni) mol(1 − ni) s−1)
- M :
-
Constant depending on equipment type (1)
- m i :
-
Mass concentration (g m−3g/m3)
- Mi :
-
Molecular mass (kg/ mol−1)
- N :
-
Revolution speed (min−1)
- n i :
-
Reaction order (1)
- Q :
-
Designed equipment capacity (m−3, kW)
- Q B :
-
Equipment base capacity (m−3, kW)
- Re :
-
Re number (1)
- r i :
-
Reaction rate (mol m−3 s−1)
- V :
-
Volume (m3)
- α :
-
Distribution ratio (1)
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the European Union and financed by the European Social Fund in the frame of the TÉT_12_RO-1-2013-0017 and TAMOP-4.2.2/A-11/1/KONV-2012-0071 projects. Tamás Varga’s research activity in this work was supported by the European Union and the State of Hungary, co-financed by the European Social Fund in the framework of TÁMOP-4.2.4.A/2-11/1-2012-0001 ‘National Excellence Program’.
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Egedy, A., Fogarasi, S., Varga, T. et al. CFD models in the development of electrical waste recycling technologies. Clean Techn Environ Policy 16, 1255–1263 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-014-0816-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-014-0816-6