Hydrodynamic cavitation in minifluidic Venturi nozzle

Victor Kaplan Dept. of Fluid Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology, Technická 2896/2, 61669 Brno, Czech Republic

^* Corresponding author: 192038@vutbr.cz

Published online: 4 July 2024

Abstract

This article describes the design of a small Venturi nozzle for hydrodynamic cavitation wastewater treatment research. A water circuit powered by compressed air was set up for the experiment. The nozzle design allowed visualization of the cavitating flow directly in the nozzle using a high-speed camera. Experiments were carried out with the nozzle to obtain a visualization of the flow and the dependence of the loss coefficient on the cavitation number. Furthermore, computational modeling of the flow was performed based on the results obtained in the experiment. Cavitation could play an important role in removing pollutants from water that cannot be removed by conventional methods in water treatment plants. The ability to process large quantities of water is one of the great advantages of hydrodynamic cavitation, however, when testing the influence of cavitation on pollutants contained in water, the need for large quantities of tested water appears unnecessary, impractical, and expensive. Research is still needed to better understand the effects of cavitation on water purification, and small-scale experiments may be more suitable for this kind of task.