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Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 416429 (2011)
ABSTRACT: The main concern of this study is to investigate the flow mixing generated by helical ribbon blade
impellers and to show that with the help of CFD the performance of the mixing system can be significantly improved
by optimizing the geometric configuration of the impeller. To fulfill this objective, a numerical model is developed
to solve the Navier-Stokes equations for the flow field. However, difficulties arise due to the rotation of the impeller
in the vessel. In order to ease the problem, the velocity field is assumed to be in a quasi-steady state and the
multiframe of reference is adopted to tackle the rotation of the impeller. For discretization the fully conservative
finite volume method, together with unstructured grid technology, is incorporated. It is shown that the flow in the
mixer can be regarded as a flow in an open channel with a wall moving at an angle with respect to the channel. The
influences of the blade pitch, the blade width, and the clearance gap between the blade and the surrounding wall are
examined. The mechanism to cause these effects is delineated in detail. It is demonstrated that after optimization of
the blade geometry, the circulating flow rate induced by the impeller is largely increased, leading to significant
reduction in mixing time. In addition, the power demand is reduced. It is also evidenced that by enlarging the
clearance, it is difficult for the fluid in this region to be mixed.
Keywords: mixing flows, stirred mixers, helical ribbon blade impellers, multiframe of reference, unstructuredgrid methods
1. INTRODUCTION
The mixing of fluids is a common operation
encountered in productions of polymer, food,
paint, and greases, to name a few. Poor mixing
may result in formation of dead zones, hot spots,
and temperature and concentration gradients,
which will affect the quality of the final products.
The selection of mixing systems depends on
operating conditions such as agitation speeds and
fluid properties. When the viscosity of the fluid is
low, the rotational speed of the agitator can be
high enough to produce turbulent flows. Most of
these systems involve the use of turbine impellers
such as Rushton turbines or pitched blades. For
highly viscous liquids, the flow is more likely in
the laminar regime because, otherwise, an
extremely high demand of power is required. The
use of small turbine impellers becomes inefficient
as stagnant zones may be formed in the region at
far distance from the impeller. To obtain adequate
mixing under laminar flow conditions, closeclearance impellers are usually adopted. Impellers
such as anchors, gates, or paddle impellers, which
produce mainly circumferential flow, perform
poorly in mixing because of lack of axial flow to
sweep through the entire vessel. In an agitating
N *p N p Re
(1)
N *p c1
(2)
Km Ntm c2
Qd
(5)
(3)
Various
methods,
including
conductivity
techniques (Rieger et al., 1986; Dieulot et al.,
2002), thermal techniques (Delaplace et al.,
2000b),
coloration/decoloration
techniques
(Carreau et al., 1976; Kppel, 1979a; Ryan et al.,
1988), liquid crystal techniques (Takahashi et al.,
1982b; Takahashi et al., 1988), and chemical
reaction techniques (Hayes et al., 1998), have
been adopted to measure the mixing time.
However, the determination of the degree of the
mixing homogeneity depends on the techniques
used. This results in considerable scatter in the
constant, which makes the comparison of mixing
performance difficult.
In addition to the mixing time, circulation time is
also often employed as a criterion for evaluation
of the mixing performance. It is the time for a
fluid element to complete a vertical circulating
loop in the vessel during the mixing process. It is
generally recognized that the circulation time is
proportional to the mixing time. Therefore, the
dimensionless circulation Kc, defined as the
product of the circulation time tc by the rotational
speed, is also a constant for a specific mixing
system (Takahashi et al., 1989; Delaplace et al.,
2000b).
Kc Ntc c3
vtot
tc
KQ
Qd
ND 3
(6)
(4)
2. MATHEMATICAL METHOD
A sketch of the top view and side view of the
agitating system is shown in Fig. 1. The flow in
the vessel is inevitably unsteady and threedimensional. Fully time-dependent computations
for 3D flow are very time-consuming. The
simulation of the velocity field in the agitating
418
ds
W
h1
rotational
frame
Vj
rotational
frame
H h
x j
Fig.1
(8)
stationary frame
(7)
p 1 Vi
(V jVi )
(
) qi
x j
xi x j Re x j
h1
rotational grid.
Vj V j V jg
mixer can become easier by assuming a quasisteady state. This steady state assumption can be
regarded as a snapshot in photography. The
steady-state predictions by Wechsler et al. (1999)
for the flow induced by a pitched-blade impeller
showed a close agreement with the fully unsteady
calculations, at a cost of only a fraction of the
computer time of the latter. In steady-state
calculations, the impeller is frozen at a specific
position without moving. To make the fluid flow,
the volume swept by the impeller is mounted on a
rotational frame. The body forces generated by
the rotational frame trigger off fluid movement. If
the driving momentum of the impeller is large
enough, the fluid flow follows the rotation of the
impeller closely. Thus, the entire volume of the
vessel can be regarded as moving with the
impeller and it can be assumed that the whole
vessel rotates with the impeller in the simulation
(Tanguy et al., 1992; Bertrand et al. 1999; Devals
et al., 2008). However, the geometry of the
impeller blade is largely varied in our study. As
the blade width or the impeller pitch becomes
small, the rotational effect will be limited only to
the region around the impeller. The assumption of
a single rotational frame becomes not appropriate.
Therefore, multiple frames are adopted in our
calculations. The multiframe of reference has also
been adopted by Rahimi et al. (2010) in
calculating the flow in helical ribbon impeller
mixers. As shown in Fig. 1, the vessel is divided
into two parts. The inner part is stationary while a
rotational frame is imposed on the outer part
where the helical blade impeller is located. The
(9)
(10a)
(10b)
(11)
V
f sf 0
s 2f
f s f
(C P )
PC s f
s 2f
f (s f
PC )
PC s f
(15)
(12)
(
V
f s f ) f Re f s f qv
f
f
where represents
each
of
the
(13)
velocity
(a)
stationary domain
rotating domain
f UD ( )UD
(14)
(b)
Fig. 2
420
C
1 C
(VjC )
(
)
t x j
x j P e x j
3.1
(16)
3.2
Flow structure
Table 1 Comparison of power number N p with experiments for different pitches and clearances
Predictions
Experiments
S/D=0.5
S/D=1.
C/D=0.0105
C/D=0.029
C/D=0.053
344
334
212
242
348
334
240
246
196
208
421
(a)
p
129
127
125
123
121
119
117
115
113
111
109
107
105
103
101
99
97
95
93
91
89
87
85
(b)
Fig. 3
(17)
Vw
pp
As
Vt
Az
Vc
ps
As
pout Az
Fig. 4
3.3
422
W/D=0.1
NP
exp(Kappel)
400
NP
N*P,p
*
NP,f
200
(a)
S/D
about S/D=2.1.
The discharge flux induced by the impeller is
defined as
0.12
KQ
0.11
W/D=0.1
W/D=0.25
0.09
0.07
0.06
0.05
0.04
Fig. 5
S/D
10
8
*
p, p
Rv
R0
(18)
0.08
(b)
R0
Rs
Q d 2 Vz rdr 2 Vz rdr
S/D=1/3
S/D=0.5
S/D=0.9
S/D=2
S/D=4
S/D=
Vz
6
4
0.1
2
0
-2
-4
-6
-8
0
Fig. 6
423
0 .2
r/D
0.4
NP
400
300
S/D=0.5
*
NP
*
NP,p
*
NP,f
200
100
0.1
0.2
(a)
W/D
0.3
0.4
0.12
KQ
0. 1
0.08
25
S/D= 0.5
S/D= 1.0
0.06
Vz
20
W/D=0.1
W/D=0.25
W/D=0.4
0.04
15
0.02
0.4
10
0.1
0.2
(b)
Fig. 7
0.3
W/D
-5
-10
Fig. 8
3.5
0.1
0.2
r/D
0 .3
0.4
0.5
424
W /D=0.1, S/D=0.5
exp (Kappel)
N*P
N*P ,p
N*P ,f
lower side part of N*P,f
upper side part of N*P,f
clearance side part of N*P,f
500
*
NP
400
300
200
100
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
C C v C C v
C C v 2C (1 C )v
i
0.1
(a)
C/D
o
i
K 0 .0 8
Q
(19)
tot
0 .0 6
W/D=0.1, S/D=0.5
0 .0 4
0 .0 2
0
(b)
Fig. 9
0.02
0 .0 4
C/D0.0 6
0 .08
0.1
0.8
benchmark blade
W/D=0.1, S/D= 0.5
0.6
optimized blade
W/D=0.25, S/D= 0.7
0.4
0.2
Mixing performance
50
100
150
200
Nt(no. of revolutions)
Fig. 10 Comparing mixing performance of
benchmark with optimized configurations.
425
at four
0.5
C/D=0.01
Nt=20
Nt=100
Nt=200
0.4
Benchmark
case
Optimized
case
Nt=0
Nt=50
Nt=100
Nt=150
Nt=200
0.266
0.169
0.131
0.107
0.170
0.082
0.044
0.024
Nt=20
N t=1 00
0.2
0.1
C
0.2
0.19
0.18
0.17
0.16
0.15
0.14
0.13
0.12
0.11
0.1
0.09
0.08
0.07
0.06
0.05
0.04
0.03
0.02
0.01
0
(a)
Nt=0
0.3
N t=2 0
Nt=10 0
(b)
0.1
(a)
0. 2
0.6
0.3
r/D 0.4
0.6
C/D=0.1
Nt=20
Nt=100
Nt=200
0.5
C
0.2
0.1 9
0.1 8
0.1 7
0.1 6
0.1 5
0.1 4
0.1 3
0.1 2
0.1 1
0.1
0.0 9
0.0 8
0.0 7
0.0 6
0.0 5
0.0 4
0.0 3
0.0 2
0.0 1
0
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0.1
0.2
(b)
0.3
r/D
0.4
0.5
0.6
Fig. 12 Distribution of mean concentration at midheight of vessel for two different clearances:
(a) C=0.01D and (b) C=0.1D.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the National Science
Council under the contract number NSC-96-2221E-009-135-MY2. Acknowledgment is due to one
of the reviewers who indicates the necessity to
separate the clearance gap from the rotating frame
and to divide the vessel into three frames.
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