The present study is concerned with the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of turbulent dispersion of immiscible liquids

namely

water-silicone oil and water-benzene through Kenics static mixers using the Eulerian-Eulerian and Eulerian-Lagrangian approaches of the ANSYS Fluent 16.0 software. To study the droplet size distribution (DSD)

the Eulerian formulation incorporating a population balance model (PBM) was employed. For the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach

a discrete phase model (DPM) in conjunction with the Eulerian approach for continuous phase simulation was used to predict the residence time distribution (RTD) of droplets. In both approaches

a shear stress transport (SST)

k-ω

turbulence model was used. For validation purposes

the simulated results were compared with the experimental data and theoretical values for the Fanning friction factor

Sauter mean diameter and the mean residence time. The reliability of the computational model was further assessed by comparing the results with the available empirical correlations for Fanning friction factor and Sauter mean diameter. In addition

the influence of important geometrical and operational param

eters

including the number of mixing elements and Weber number

was studied. It was found that the proposed models are capable of predicting the performance of the Kenics static mixer reasonably well.