An investigation on cavitation mechanism induced by interaction between stator and rotor of cylindrical rotational hydrodynamic cavitation reactor

Abstract

In present work, a method combining experimental flow visualization and numerical simulation was adopted to investigate the cavitation mechanism induced by the interaction between the rotor and stator of a cylindrical rotational hydrodynamic cavitation reactor (CRHCR). The results show that the shearing and perturbation of the fluid inside the CRHCR chamber were enhanced by stator-rotor interaction, which resulted in more intense cavitation in rotor grooves and oblique tooth regions. Besides, due to the flow separation phenomena during the shearing of the fluid by the oblique teeth, additional shear cavitation zones were generated. Meanwhile, the fluid in stator groove is driven to rotate during high-speed rotation of the rotor. The vortex flow effect appeared, which induced the vortex cavitation in the stator groove. Finally, an experiment on the degradation rate of organic pollutants was carried out. The results indicate that the stator-rotor interaction effectively achieved the process intensification of organic pollutants degradation.