Fluidic valve for reactor regeneration flow switching

Abstract

An unusual and in many respects advantageous no-moving-part valve is described,developed for switching fluid flows in a through-flow reactor that requires a periodic regeneration by temporary replacement of the process fluid by another, regeneration fluid. The unusual feature of the valve is that it is axisymmetric, built integrally into the inlet part of the reactor body. The valve operation is based upon a monostable axisymmetric variant of the Coanda effect of jet attachment to a wall. The jet is annular and there are two attachment walls of conical shape. The outer hollow cone is dominant while the auxiliary inner convex cone is small, almost vestigial. Concentrating on the performance in a no-spillover regime, experimental data obtained in cold-air laboratory tests using a full-scale model are compared with numerical flowfield computations, using unusual non-dimensional presentation