Hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) is being increasingly used in a wide range of applications. Unlike ultrasonic cavitation, HC is scalable and has been used at large scale industrial applications. However, no information about influence of scale on performance of HC is available in the open literature. In this work, we present for the first time, experimental data on use of HC for degradation of complex organic pollutants in water on four different scales (~200 times scale-up in terms of capacity). Vortex based HC devices offer various advantages like early inception, high cavitational yield and significantly lower propensity to clogging and erosion. We have used vortex based HC devices in this work. 2,4 dichloroaniline (DCA) – an aromatic compound with multiple functional groups was considered as a model pollutant. Degradation of DCA in water was performed using vortex-based HC devices with characteristic throat dimension, d_t as 3, 6, 12 and 38 mm with scale-up of almost 200 time based on the flow rates (1.3 to 247 LPM). Considering the experimental constraints on operating the largest scale HC device, the experimental data is presented here at only one value of pressure drop across HC device (280 kPa). A previously used per-pass degradation model was extended to describe the experimental data for the pollutant used in this study and a generalised form is presented. The degradation performance was found to decrease with increase in the scale and then plateaus. Appropriate correlation was developed based on the experimental data. The developed approach and presented results provide a sound basis and a data set for further development of comprehensive multi-scale modelling of HC devices.

水动力空化 (HC) 的应用越来越广泛。与超声波空化不同，HC 具有可扩展性，并已用于大规模工业应用。然而，公开文献中没有关于规模对 HC 性能影响的信息。在这项工作中，我们首次展示了使用 HC 在四种不同规模（容量放大约 200 倍）下降解水中复杂有机污染物的实验数据。基于涡流的 HC 设备具有多种优势，例如启动早、空化率高以及堵塞和腐蚀倾向显着降低。我们在这项工作中使用了基于涡流的 HC 设备。 2,4 二氯苯胺 (DCA)——一种具有多个官能团的芳香族化合物被认为是模型污染物。使用基于涡流的 HC 装置对水中 DCA 进行降解，其特征喉部尺寸 d _t为 3、6、12 和 38 mm，并根据流速（1.3 至 247 LPM）放大了近 200 倍。考虑到操作最大规模 HC 装置的实验限制，此处仅在 HC 装置的一个压降值 (280 kPa) 下提供实验数据。先前使用的单程降解模型被扩展以描述本研究中使用的污染物的实验数据，并提出了通用形式。发现降解性能随着规模的增加而降低，然后达到稳定水平。根据实验数据开发了适当的相关性。所开发的方法和提出的结果为进一步开发 HC 设备的综合多尺度建模提供了良好的基础和数据集。