Approach of a fluid dynamic model for the investigation of an industrial wet chemical process bath

Simulation of the fluid flow in a basin of a wet chemical batch plant for silicon solar cells gains a deeper understanding of the processes in the basin. Flow simulations trough elements with large scale differences, e.g. perforated plates, leads to long simulation time. Perforated plates are used in pipeline systems for the pressure control, before flowmeters to remove swirls in filtering systems or in wet chemical process baths for the rectification of the flow. In a previous work, it was shown that the simulation of a wet chemical process bath with COMSOL Multiphysics® needs a replacement of the perforated plate by a screen feature to save computational time. The screen feature is a two-dimensional plane which changes the flow, according to the perforated plate without solving all dimensions in detail. The implemented screen function in COMSOL is valid to replace perforated plates in the range of a plate thickness t and hole diameter D t/D < 0.20. With a parameter variation of the perforated plate in a 2D simulation, an adapted screen function is found, to cover the parameter range of 0.25 < t/D < 4.33. The adapted screen function of t/D = 0.50 was transferred in a 3D model and compared with a simulation of a perforated plate. It was found, that the simulation runs five times faster with the adjusted screen function, by reducing the mesh elements from 1.1·106 to 0.1·106, whereby the mean of e.g. the volume flow is similar, with ⩒ = 15±7 l/min for the perforated plate and ⩒ = 17±11 l/min for the adjusted screen feature. The adjusted screen function saves time in simulations that include perforated plates, in particular when it comes to a comparison of different plates.