Oscillatory Flow Mixing

The oscillatory flow story started at Sussex University in the late 1970s. I worked with a control engineer, Graeme Knott on wave energy experiments and we discovered that reversing flows around sharp edges generated eddies which was bad for wave energy devices. However, flow separation and therefore eddies could be eliminated by the rounding of edges.

On moving to Chemical Engineering at Cambridge in 1979, I followed the oscillatory flow work up exploring the use of reversing flows to encourage eddy formation and fluid mixing. This was done through a series of student projects which resulted in developing an oscillatory flow mixing (OFM) process using periodically baffled tubes.

The background to (OFM) is told in a departmental review seminar that I gave at Cambridge in 2010

Oscillatory Flow Mixing (OFM)

OFM-Chem Eng Cambridge 2010 (v2) (.pdf)

A further presentation involving Oscillatory Flow Mixing (OFM) is given below.

Strathclyde-2014 (v2) (.pdf)

Papers relevant to Oscillatory Flow are given below.