A Parallel Method for Population Balance Equations Based on the Method of Characteristics

In this paper, we present a parallel scheme to solve the population balance equations based on the method of characteristics and the finite element discretization. The application of the method of characteristics transform the higher dimensional population balance equation into a series of lower dimensional convection-diffusion-reaction equations which can be solved in a parallel way.Some numerical results are presented to show the accuracy and efficiency.Comment: 10 pages, 0 figur

A comparative study of a direct discretization and an operator-splitting solver for population balance systems

A direct discretization approach and an operator-splitting scheme are applied for the numerical simulation of a population balance system which models the synthesis of urea with a uni-variate population. The problem is formulated in axisymmetric form and the setup is chosen such that a steady state is reached. Both solvers are assessed with respect to the accuracy of the results, where experimental data are used for comparison, and the efficiency of the simulations. Depending on the goal of simulations, to track the evolution of the process accurately or to reach the steady state fast, recommendations for the choice of the solver are given