Automated, Compact Mixing Device for Gases, Hydrocarbon Fuels Developed
Automated, Compact Mixing Device for Gases, Hydrocarbon Fuels Developed lead image
Investigating potential and current hydrocarbon fuels requires testing their chemistry and responses to certain conditions and preparing mixtures of them correctly. However, accomplishing the correct mixture for large flow rates in a compact, repeatable manner can be a difficult task.
Dalmiya et al. designed a mixing apparatus that combines batch mixing with flow mixing techniques. The former is typically used to make a small quantity of gas in a cylinder. The latter is the most common way to mix substances in large quantities but must operate at steady state.
To meet the goals of their future fuel experiments, the team needed a lot of gas mixture but intermittently, so they could not run the mixer at steady state or prepare a large quantity of gas beforehand without a significant amount of waste. Instead, their device uses batch mixing to mix gases, then temporarily stores them in a cylinder for periodic use. That cylinder is topped off as needed.
The researchers tested their mixing apparatus by sampling its outgoing gases and testing the concentrations with gas chromatography.
“We envision this for anyone who does automated or high-throughput experiments, fast measurements, and fast characterization,” said author Patrick Lynch. “It has applications for materials synthesis and other types of chemical or process characterizations, not just fuel. It’s more than just our combustion community that can use this.”
The scientists have made three of these devices and said they are willing and able to help others duplicate them. They are currently improving the apparatus to better handle multicomponent liquids, which is important for examining jet fuels and new gasoline mixtures.
Source: “High pressure, high flow rate batch mixing apparatus for high throughput experiments,” by Anandvinod Dalmiya, Jai M. Mehta, Robert S. Tranter, and Patrick T. Lynch, Review of Scientific Instruments (2021). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0071472 .
