Dr. Rodney O. Fox, Associate Professor at Iowa State University, was an invited speaker at the 1999 Users' Group Meeting held in Danvers, MA. As a renowned expert in the field of reaction modeling, Dr. Fox's presentation on "CFD Models for Liquid- Phase Turbulent Reacting Flows" underscored Fluent's continuous commitment to leading-edge technical capabilities for process industry applications of CFD.

The presentation provided an overview of the physics needed to perform liquid reaction modeling within the context of turbulent CFD simulations. Professor Fox's work centers on the effect of sub-grid scale mixing (or micromixing) on reaction models, and is particularly relevant in liquids where the time scales for mixing and reaction can be comparable.

His recent work involving multipeak PDF reaction methods provides a general engineering tool that can be used for a wide range of reacting flow applications. Through user-defined subroutines in FLUENT, Dr. Fox implemented his multi-peak PDF reaction model and a non-linear nucleation model. He showed results for a precipitation reaction in a tubular reactor that includes a single step liquid reaction followed by the conversion of the product to fine particles. The model predicts a four-valued distribution of initial particle sizes, and crystal growth governed by mass transfer to the particulate phase.

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