Coupling mechanism for sunlight scattering of particles and radiation-conduction of metal baffle in push-flow anaerobic reactor

The present work built a kind of model directed against coupling procedure of particles scattering and metal baffles radiation-conduction in the push-flow anaerobic reactor (PFAR) to investigate the influence of baffles array on its temperature uniformity, energy efficiency and friction loss. The working medium in PFAR was re-action liquid flowing with a slow velocity, and irradiated by a stable intensity. The results show that changing the baffles array highly improved the performance that transferring heat from top to inner of PFAR. With the baffles number increasing, the temperature uniformity of the reactor is greatly promoted, and the high temperature energy around glasses was consumed by the flowing reaction liquid to raise the outlet temperature more quickly. In addition, compared between zero baffle and 15 baffles, the time of holding low temperature (dark area in the projection) of PFAR had been compressed from 200 s to 50 s with an increase rate of 300%. When the limit of outlet temperature was 21.3 degrees C, the time saving and the speed improving rate were 284 s and 133.64% respectively. However, the disadvantage of linearly increasing friction resistance gradually offset the advantage of curvilinearly increasing energy efficiency.