Numerical Analysis of Fluid Flow in Aquaculture Systems

Abstract

The aquaculture industry is currently experiencing a strong surge of interest due to its sustainable management and efficient land use. Unfortunately, the operating cost of such facilities has made it tougher to replace current conventional systems. There is a need to find better solutions to improve the operational efficiency of these systems to become more financially attractive. This work will present a numerical and experimental analysis of a dual injector airlift pump developed by Ahmed and Badr [1]. As well as a case study of an aquaculture raceway system with an integrated airlift pump system. Utilizing the Volume of Fluid (VOF) multi-phase model along with the K-ε turbulence model, a numerical study using ANSYS Fluent 19.0 was performed for the two-phase flow of an aquaculture raceway system. The flow characteristics of the airlift pump injectors were studied under single phase flow conditions. These simulation results were used to scale an airlift pump to operate in a 3.5 m raceway system. The numerical results had an average RMS agreement of ±15% with the experimental results. The present study was found to present a great tool for optimizing the airlift pump design, as well as modifying the design of future aquaculture systems or other two-phase flow applications.