Omkar Khare
University of Limerick
Supervisor: Prof. Vivek V. Ranade
Brief Bio
Omkar is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Networks (MSCA-DN) Fellow at the Multiphase Reactors and INtensification Group (MRING). His current research project, CaviPRO DC10, focuses on the Scale-up/Numbering-up of hydrodynamic cavitation devices. Omkar holds a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering with a specialization in Chemical Process and Technology from the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), The Netherlands.
During his time at TU/e, he completed his master’s thesis titled “On the influence of virtual mass force in liquid-solid systems”, under the guidance of Prof. Hans Kuipers and Dr. Maike Baltussen in the research group of Multi-Scale Modelling of Multiphase Flows. The research project focused on developing a new closure for virtual mass force in liquid-solid flows using the Immersed Boundary Method (IBM) and modeling water-softening reactors. Apart from his academic and research activities, Omkar enjoys playing cricket, watching movies, and reading ancient Vedic literature.
Project Description
Hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) is claimed scalable without adequate verification and validation. Geometrically similar scale-up has been reported to drastically reduce the performance of HC devices. Unfortunately, no systematic understanding, data or computational models are available to achieve scale-up or appropriate numbering-up strategies without jeopardising their performance. This PhD project aims on studying the scale-influence on the HC device performance and on developing scale-/numbering-up strategies using computational models and internals. By developing new ways of maintaining scale invariant extent and intensity of cavitation, scale-up of HC devices at least by two orders of magnitude (1 LPM to 100 LPM) shall be achieved. The key objectives are, 1) Use design of experiments and numerical modelling to quantify influence of scale and operating conditions on performance of HC devices. 2) Study the effects of scale-up and number-up; and optimise right scale and number of HC device. 3) Optimise HC device designs and select appropriate internals for maintaining consistent performance across scales. 4) Develop and validate scale-up strategies for HC devices and processes.
