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Modeling of the 3D hydrodynamics of 2‐blade impellers in stirred tanks filled with a highly viscous fluid
Author(s) -
Abld Mohammed,
Xuereb Catherine,
Bertrand Joël
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
the canadian journal of chemical engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.404
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1939-019X
pISSN - 0008-4034
DOI - 10.1002/cjce.5450720202
Subject(s) - impeller , agitator , paddle , computational fluid dynamics , mechanics , viscous liquid , mixing (physics) , flow (mathematics) , mechanical engineering , engineering , physics , quantum mechanics
This paper deals with mixing in stirred tank reactors by paddle agitators and two‐blade impellers with different blade widths. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used to solve the 3D hydrodynamics and to obtain at every point the flow patterns, the stress components and the viscous dissipation function. From the latter information, the power consumption is calculated. These results are compared with available experimental data: good agreement is observed. For example, for a paddle agitator, the flow is essentially plane far away from the horizontal walls. That means that, in order to create an axial circulation in the volume of the tank, the impeller height has to be decreased. This work documents the ability of CFD to model changes in flow patterns for three dimensional flows in stirred tanks.