CFD simulation of mass transfer and flow behaviour around a single particle in bioleaching process

The pathway to reach a certain target in many processes such as bioleaching, due to the complex and poorly understood hydrodynamics, reaction kinetics, and chemistry knowledge involved is not apparent. An investigation of the interactions between the parameters in bioleaching process can be applied to optimize the rate of metal extraction from sulphide minerals. Such investigations can be carried out with the aid of numerical simulations. In this study, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was developed to better understand the mass transfer phenomenon and complex flow field around a single particle. The commercial software FLUENT 6.2 has been employed to solve the governing equations. Volume of fluid (VOF) method was used to predict the fluid volume fraction in a 3D geometry. The computational model has successfully captured the results observed in the experiments. Simulation results indicate that concentrations of species in a thin layer of liquid on the particle surface are much higher than their concentrations in the liquid bulk and significant gradients in the ion concentrations between the surface of the particle and the liquid bulk were observed. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.