Numerical Investigation of a Liquid-Gas Ejector Used for Shipping Ballast Water Treatment

Shipping ballast water can have significant ecological and economic impacts on aquatic ecosystems. Currently, water ejectors are widely used in marine applications for ballast water treatment owing to their high suction capability and reliability. In this communication, an improved ballast treatment system employing a liquid-gas ejector is introduced to clear the ballast water to reduce environmental risks. Commonly, the liquid-gas ejector uses ballast water as the primary fluid and chemical ozone as the secondary fluid. In this study, high-pressure water and air, instead of ballast water and ozone, are considered through extensive numerical and experimental research. The ejector is particularly studied by a steady three-dimensional multiphase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis with commercial software ANSYS-CFX 14.5. Different turbulence models (including standard k-ε, RNG k-ε, SST, and k-ω) with different grid size and bubble size are compared extensively and the experiments are carried out to validate the numerical design and optimization. This study concludes that the RNG k-ε turbulence model is the most efficient and effective for the ballast water treatment system under consideration and simple change of nozzle shape can greatly improve the ejector performance under high back pressure conditions