Engineering design of spray drying processes needs fundamental knowledge of spray nozzles, their pressure drop characteristics, droplet size distribution, scale-up criteria, etc. Especially the prediction of droplet size distribution and the choice of a suitable nozzle are still demanding tasks.

Peter Renze, Kerstin Heinen and Michael Schönherr, BASF SE, Germany, investigated two different kinds of spraying nozzles with numerical simulation of the multiphase flow inside the open source software OpenFOAM^®.

With the volume-of-fluid method, in combination with LES (large-eddy simulation) turbulence modeling, reasonable results for the spray pattern, pressure drop, spray angle, etc. were obtained. It was shown that the simulation results and especially local information about relevant physical variables of the spray process can be investigated quantitatively in detail.

• Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Pressure Swirl Atomizers,
  P. Renze, K. Heinen, M. Schönherr,
  Chem. Eng. Technol. 2011, 34 (7), 1191-1198.
  DOI: 10.1002/ceat.201100054