Presented by:
Debolina Dasgupta, Postdoctoral Appointee, Argonne National 
Laboratory
 
Nanostructured materials have a wide array of potential 
applications, including materials science, catalysis, and 
energetics. Flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) is a versatile, 
cost-effective, and scalable method for large-scale 
production of single- and multi-component oxide 
nanoparticles, such as SiO2, TiO2, FeO, and Al2O3, from 
relatively cheap precursors. The final particle size and 
morphology are tied to the flame temperature, the residence 
time of the particles in the flame, the precursor 
concentration, dispersion gas flow rate, and the flow field 
within the reactor. However, the nature of the interaction 
between the complex fluid dynamics, chemistry, and 
mechanisms of nanoparticle formation is unknown.
 
This webinar presents a study in which CONVERGE is used to 
perform CFD simulations of the FSP burner at Argonne 
National Laboratory to investigate the physics controlling 
the nanoparticle synthesis. Detailed volume of fluid (VOF) 
simulations are conducted to understand the spray 
atomization and to provide a droplet size distribution, 
which is used to initiate the Lagrangian spray in subsequent 
Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations. The 3D 
RANS simulations are performed using CONVERGE’s SAGE 
combustion model, RNG k-ε turbulence model, and TAB spray 
breakup model. In addition, the method of moments used in 
particle mimic (PM), originally implemented for soot 
modeling, is employed via custom executables to describe the 
nanoparticle formation. The simulation results are validated 
against experimental data from the Materials Engineering 
Research Facility at Argonne.