MODELING AND CFD SIMULATION OF ZINC SULPHATE FERTILIZER GRANULE DISSOLUTION IN SOIL SOLUTION

Abstract

Improving the use efficiency of fertilizers and controlling the rate of fertilizers dissolution has been an important mater in fertilizers manufacturing. In this study, an unsteady two dimensional model has been considered to predict release time of zinc sulphate fertilizer granules. Note that zinc sulphate is a strong electrolyte. The spherical granule modelling has been coupled to the soil solution. This coupling model has been used to remove reaction rate term in the spherical granule governing equation. It is assumed that the surface reaction is existed on solid-liquid surface. The computational fluid dynamic (CFD) calculation with the finite element method (FEM) has been carried out to simulate the governing equation. The effects of some important parameters such as the height of soil solution (h) and the radius (R) of fertilizer granule have been investigated. The complete release time has been achieved for different value of ratio of h and R.