Planar laser induced fluorescence technique for measurements of concentration fields in continuous stirred tank reactors

 A new non-intrusive method based on laser sheet visualization and image processing has been developed to measure the instantaneous concentration fields of a non-reacting fluorescent dye in a continuous stirred tank reactor. The method consists of measuring the fluorescence intensity of a tracer excited by a thin planar laser sheet and in transforming it into an instantaneous concentration field of tracer by a calibration procedure. This allows the characterization of mixing in a plane defined as the cross section of the flow by the laser sheet. Flow visualization images have been recorded on video tape and subsequently digitized. The relationship between the intensity of the fluorescent light and the grey level of the images has been established. The first result is the instantaneous field of dye concentration. A contacting parameter between the fluids coming from the two inlet sources, and emphasizing the average state of the mixing, has been defined and its field has been determined. The field of temporal variance, which characterizes the segregation of the investigated zone, has also been computed. Received: 15 December 1995/Accepted: 28 April 1996