Modeling of the natural and forced convection in a vortex chamber of the chemical reactor

The subject of this research is a chemical reactor for producing tungsten. A physical and mathematical model of fluid flow and heat transfer in the chemical reactor under forced and free convection has been described and developed by two methods. The numerical simulation was carried out using “vortex–stream function” and “velocity–pressure” variables. The velocity and temperature distribution in reactor were obtained. The parametric studies of the effect of the Reynolds, Prandtl, and Rossby criteria on the flow characteristics were also performed. The graphs presented show that the natural convection has a significant impact on the flow hydrodynamics and intensifies the heat transfer.
The reliability of the calculations was verified by comparing the results obtained by the methods mentioned above. Furthermore, the created model was applied for numerical solving of a classical test problem of velocity distribution in an annular channel and that of the rotating infinite disk in a stationary liquid. The research results are in a good agreement with the analytical solutions.