Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 7, No. 2, pp.

282294 (2013)

SOLID SUSPENSION IN STIRRED TANK EQUIPPED WITH MULTI-

SIDE-ENTERING AGITATORS
J. Fang *, X. Ling and Z.F. Sang

College of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Nanjing University of Technology, Nanjing, 210009,
China
* E-Mail: fjian04@sina.com (Corresponding Author)

ABSTRACT: The flow field and solid distribution in a stirred tank equipped with four side-entering agitators were
investigated using both experimental measurements and CFD simulations. Experiments were carried out to
determine the regularity of the solid sediment distribution on the tank bottom and the critical impeller speed for off-
bottom suspension. The CFD simulation was performed using the Eulerian-Eulerian two-phase approach, the
standard k- turbulence model and the multiple reference frame (MRF) approach. The predicted critical impeller
speeds were compared with the experimental data to validate the CFD model. The effects of the solid loading and
some installation parameters including inclined angles of the impeller, plunging length and mounting height of the
shaft on the critical impeller speed were investigated. The predicted results showed reasonably good agreement with
the experimental data for both the distribution of solid accumulation and critical impeller speeds. The solid loading
has a greater influence on the critical impeller speed in the side-entering stirred tank than that in the top-entering
tank. On the basis of the CFD simulation determined critical impeller speeds under different conditions, the above
installation parameters of the agitator were optimized. The results and discussion here will have useful implications
for design and optimization of the solid-liquid suspension in side-entering stirred tanks.
Keywords: solid suspension, CFD, critical impeller speed, side-entering agitator

1. INTRODUCTION obtain detailed solid distribution in the whole

Solid-liquid stirred reactors are widely used in
many process industries such as fine chemicals,
biotechnology, cosmetics, consumer products,
food, and mineral processing. The primary
objective of solid-liquid mixing is to avoid solid
accumulation in the stirred tank or to ensure that
the solid particles are distributed uniformly
throughout the tank. Many factors critically affect
the suspension of solid particles in the stirred
vessels, including impeller speed, solid and liquid
properties and stirred tank construction. A good
understanding of the distribution of solid particles
in the tank is significant for the design and scale-
up of solid-liquid suspension systems. Many
experimental investigations on mixing and solid
suspension in vessels of different geometrical
configurations agitated by various types of
impellers have been performed in the past (Hicks
et al., 1997; Wu et al., 2001; Sharma and Shaikh,
2003; Al-Qaessi and Abu-Farah, 2009;
Sardeshpande et al., 2009; Jirout and Rieger,
2011). However, the main objective of these
investigations was the determination of some
macro-parameters such as the critical impeller
speed for just off-bottom suspension and the
cloud height in the vessel. It is quite difficult to
vessel through experimental measurements.
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a
powerful tool in the stirring area as it could
provide detailed information on the flow field for
single and multi-phase systems in stirred tanks.
However, the reliability of CFD predictions is
critically dependent on many factors such as the
grids of impeller/tank configurations, the
multiphase model and numerical discretization.
Montante et al. (2001) investigated the solid
suspension in a tall tank agitated with four pitched
blade turbines by the CFD simulation using a
Sliding-Grid approach coupled with the Eulerian-
Eulerian model. The predicted axial concentration
profiles of solid particles were in good agreement
with the experimental data. Ochieng and Onyango
(2008) studied the effects of drag models on the
simulation of solid suspension in a vessel stirred
by a hydrofoil propeller. Based on the consistency
between the CFD and experimental results, drag
models suitable for various solid loadings were
proposed. Khopkar et al. (2006) used the Euler-
Euler model together with the standard k-
turbulence model to predict the solid-liquid flow
in a stirred vessel. Different criteria for
determining the critical impeller speed were

Received: 26 Dec. 2011; Revised: 26 Apr. 2012; Accepted: 21 May 2012

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 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 7, No. 2 (2013)
discussed and the predicted speed values showed
good agreement with the experimental data.
Stirred tanks with side-entering agitators, which
are usually used in many industries such as pulp
and paper manufacturing, flue gas
desulphurization system and petroleum, have
received limited attention. The side-entering
agitator has such features as small relative
diameter ratio, low power consumption and high
power efficiency in comparison to the top-
entering agitator. The majority of researches on
the stirred tank are based on the top-entering
agitators, while the researches concerning side-
entering stirrers are quite limited. Previous studies
on the side-entering stirred tanks were mainly
focused on the flow structure and mixing
characteristics (Wesselingh, 1975; Dskhel and
Rahimi, 2004; Ford et al., 2006; Saeed et al.,
2007; Gomez et al., 2010; Fang et al., 2011). Wu
(2012) studied the power and flow number,
mixing characterization in large-scale circular and
rectangular stirred tanks with single and multi-
side-entering impellers using CFD technique. The
effect of inclined angles and some installation
parameters of the agitators on mixing were
discussed and optimized. Kipke (1984)
investigated the effect of the impeller position,
impeller types and diameter ratio on the
suspension characteristics of the side-entering
impellers using various scale tests based on a tank
in desulphurization industries. As far as we know,
no research has been reported in the open
literature on a combined experimental and CFD
study of solid suspension in stirred tanks with
multi-side-entering agitators. Therefore the
present study was carried out to make further
analysis of the solid-liquid flow and suspension to
get the inherent regularity of solid-liquid mixing
in agitated vessels of this kind.
In the present work, based on the validated single
phase flow field using PIV measurement data by
Fang et al. (2011), both the experimental and
CFD (Fluent 6.3) methods were used to
investigate the characteristics of the solid-liquid
flow field in a laboratory-scale cylindrical stirred
tank equipped with four axially side-entering
agitators. The flow characteristics of the liquid
phase and solid distribution in the solid-liquid
system were discussed. The critical impeller
speed for just off-bottom suspension obtained by
both experimental measurement and CFD
simulation were compared so as to validate the
accuracy of the CFD model. The effects of
different operating and installation parameters
including solid loading, inclined angles of the
impeller, the plunging length and mounting height
283
of the shaft on the critical impeller speed were
investigated to obtain the influence of these
parameters on the solid suspension in the side-
entering stirred tank.
2. EXPERIMENTS
Experiments were conducted in a scaled-down,
flat-bottomed, cylindrical tank, of diameter
T=0.58 m and equipped with four side-entering
agitators, as shown in Fig. 1. The vessel is made
of perspex and immersed in a glass rectangular
tank filled with water, so as to minimize the
visual fault owing to the refraction of the water
and curved wall of the inner vessel. Four agitators
are equally installed around the lower part of the
vessel, each with a vertical inclination angles
and a horizontal angle . Based on the design
experience of side-entering stirred tanks used in
the industries, the inclination angle and in this
test equipment were initially set as 10 and 5,
respectively. The diameter of the impeller is
D=0.1 m and its configuration is shown in Fig. 1c.
It is one type of axial-flow impeller with four 35
pitched blades. The blade was with variable
sections and the maximum ratio between blade
height and impeller diameter is 0.15. One arc
plate was set at the end of each blade to enhance
the axial pumping capacity. The agitators were
installed 0.12 m (h=1.2D) above the bottom of the
vessel and the shaft length stretched into the
vessel l=D, with a shaft diameter of 0.015 m. The
working liquid was tap water (the viscosity
l=0.001 Pas and density l=998 kg/m3) and the
liquid height H in the vessel was 0.8T. Glass bead
particles (s=2500 kg/m3) of mean diameter
dp=100 m were used as the solid phase and
various solid loading by volume s viz 1-5% v/v
were carried out in the experiments. The solid
suspension state in the tank was studied visually
through the transparent tank wall and tank bottom
with the aid of a mirror placed directly underneath
it. Critical impeller speed for off-bottom
suspension Njs was determined visually according
to the definition of Zwietering (1958)- no
particles were observed to remain at rest on the
tank bottom for more than 1-2 s. Each
measurement was performed after 10 min. of
stirring as the flow and solid particle suspension
reached the fully stabilized state. To minimize the
observation error in Njs, each of Njs was obtained
from three different runs by different workers and
then averaged.
 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 7, No. 2 (2013)

( q qU q ) + ( q qU q U q )
t (2)
= q p ( q q ,ij ) + q q gi + FB + FI

Here, q denotes the continuous phase (liquid) or

the suspended phase (solid), and i is the direction.
q and q are the density and volume fraction of
phase q, respectively. Uq is the time-averaged
value of the velocity and p is the pressure.
Further, q ,ij is the stress tensor of the phase q.
q q gi is the external body force on the phase q.
(a) vertical plane FB denotes the centrifugal and Coriolis forces. FI
represents the interfacial force, which includes
drag force (FD), non-drag forces (FND) and the
turbulent dispersion force (FTD). The turbulent
dispersion force (FTD) is considered to be
important only when the sizes of the turbulent
eddies are larger than the particle sizes. In the
solid-liquid stirred vessel, the ratio of the largest
turbulent eddy to the particle size was found to be
about 10 (Khopkar et al, 2006). So the
contribution of FTD is significant. Ljungqvist and
Rasmuson (2001) and Ochieng and Lewis (2006)
highlighted the importance of the effect of the
turbulence dispersion force while simulating
solid-liquid mixing in stirred tanks. Therefore, the
(b) horizontal plane turbulence dispersion force was considered in this
work, which is given by
CTD q kq q
FTD = (3)

with coefficient CTD taken as 0.1 (Alajbegovic et

(c) impeller
Fig. 1 Configuration of stirred tank and impeller.
3. CFD SIMULATION
3.1 Mathematical model
In the present study, the mathematical model is
formulated based on the Eulerian-Eulerian multi-
fluid model. The Reynolds averaged mass and
momentum balance equations in the turbulent
flow regime, without considering the mass and
energy transports, can be written as
( q q ) + ( q qU q ) = 0
t
al., 1999).
The non-drag forces (FND) contain the lift force
(FL) and virtual mass force (FVM), and others.
Ljungqvist and Rasmuson (2001) studied the
influence of these forces on the hydrodynamics
simulation in the stirred vessel and found that the
drag force has a major role in the solid-liquid
flow while the effect of virtual mass and lift
forces can be neglected. Therefore, only the drag
force was taken into consideration in this paper.
The expression of drag force in the i direction is
written as
FD ,i = Fl ,i = Fs ,i
3 l s l CD ( (U s ,i U l ,i ) 2 )0.5 (U s ,i U l ,i ) (4)
=
4d p
In the solid-liquid stirred tank, the drag
coefficient (CD) is a complicated function of the
the solid phase hold-up, the drag coefficient in
stagnant liquid (CD0) and bulk turbulence.
Ochieng and Onyango (2008) tried different drag
(1) models including those of Schiller-Naumann,

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 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 7, No. 2 (2013)

Brucato et al. (1998) and Gidaspow to simulate
solid-liquid flow in a stirred vessel and found that
the model of Brucato et al. (1998) gave the best
prediction. Based on their studies, this model for
estimating the drag coefficient CD was used and
the correlation is defined by
dp
CD = CD 0 1 + 8.76 104 ( )3
where
24
CD 0= (1 + 0.15 Re p 0.687 )
Re p
Here, is the Kolmogorov length scale, dp the
particle diameter and Re p the particle Reynolds
number, which is defined as
d p U s ,i U l ,i l
Re p =
l is calculated from
The Reynolds number of a single impeller for
(LES) method to simulate the solid suspension in
stirred tanks. However, this method requires a
great amount of computing time, but does not
make a dramatically improvement over the
standard k- model. Therefore, the RANS based
mixture k- turbulence model is used here to
simulate the solid-liquid flow in the stirred tank.
(5) The governing equations for turbulent kinetic
energy k and turbulent energy dissipation rate
are taken as:
( m k ) + ( mU m k ) = tm k + Gkm m (9)
(6) t m
( m ) + ( mU m )
t (10)
= tm + (C1 Gkm C2 m )
k
(7) where Um is mean velocity of the mixture, which
N

solid-liquid flow in the side-entering stirred tank U q q q

is defined as Um = n =1
N
(11)

D 2 N m
Re =
av
Here, m is the density of the mixture in solid-
m l l + s s . av is the
liquid stirred tank, =
average viscosity of the mixture and
1.8
1 Xv
av = l / , where X v = s / l and Xvb
X vb
denotes the ratio of solid to liquid volume fraction
in the solid sediment layer, Xvb=1.083.
Among different turbulence models used to
estimate the turbulent flow in a stirred tank, the
standard k- turbulence model is the most
common one. It is generally thought that the k-
model, based on isotropic turbulence assumption,
could not accurately simulate the physics of the
turbulent flow in a stirred tank. However, it has
been proven in many studies that, the predicted
results obtained using this turbulent model have
good agreement with the experimental results.
Montante and Maqelli (2005) reported that the
standard k- turbulence model with mixture
properties gave a qualitatively good
representation of the solid distribution in stirred
vessels. Ochieng and Onyango (2008) indicated
that for flows in low solid loading systems, the
solid-liquid mixing was dominated by the bulk
fluid flow and for such flow the k- model was
still an effective approach. Derkson (2003) and
Guha et al. (2008) used the large eddy simulation
q q
(8) n =1
Further, Gkm is the generation of turbulent kinetic
energy due to the mean velocity gradients, which
is defined by
1
=
G tm (U m + (U m )T ) 2 (12)
km
2
Here, tm is the turbulent viscosity and can be
written as
m C k 2
tm = (13)
The standard set of parameters usually adopted
with the k- model was used in the computations,
namely: C1=1.44, C2=1.92, C=0.09, k=1.0 and
=1.3. For all the simulations, the turbulent
Schmidt number for the liquid phase was taken as
equal to 0.8, according to the literature suggestion
(Montante et al., 2001).
3.2 Simulation methods
In this study, the commercial CFD software
(Fluent 6.3) was used to simulate the solid-liquid
flow in a side-entering agitated vessel. Because of
the symmetry of the tank configuration and
periodicity of the flow, only a quarter section of
the tank was modeled as the solution domain. The
origin of the coordinate is on the centre of the
vessel bottom and the Z-direction is set along the

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 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 7, No. 2 (2013)
axis of the vessel, as shown in Fig1. The multiple
reference frame (MRF) approach was employed
to model the rotation of the impeller in the stirred
tank. A rotating frame was defined for the region
containing the agitator while a stationary frame
was used for the outer zones containing the tank
wall. The rotating zone was a cylinder of 1.5D
diameter and 0.6D height, with the rotating axis
set along the shaft of the impeller. A steady
transfer of calculating data was made at the MRF
interface as the solution progressed. The tank wall
and stirring shaft were set to be no-slip wall
boundary condition and the standard wall
functions were used (Wang et al., 2010). The
surface of the liquid was defined as free surface
boundary condition where the shear stress was set
to zero. The two parting plane of the quarter
section of the tank was defined as periodic
boundary condition in the azimuthal direction.
Owing to the complex structure and inclination
angles of the propeller, a non-uniformed grid with
combined tetrahedral and prism unstructured
elements were performed to mesh the solution
domain. Mesh refinements near the impeller and
tank bottom were accomplished using the size
function. The second upwind discretization
scheme was chosen for the convection terms of
the momentum, turbulent kinetic energy and
energy dissipation rate equations, which was
superior to the first upwind scheme (Aubin et al.,
2004). The SIMPLE algorithm was used to couple
the pressure and momentum equations.
Simulations were considered converged when the
residuals for all parameters was below 110-4.
Further convergence checks were performed by
verifying that the velocity magnitude and solid
concentrations of some monitoring points in the
tank remained constant.
A preliminary grid convergence study was
implemented so as to verify that the simulation
was grid independent. The optimum grid was
obtained by decreasing the size to a final value
below which the discrepancies in the velocity and
kinetic energy profiles were less than 3% (Seyed
et al., 2010). The numbers of grids in both the
inner and outer zones were increased so that three
grids were generated. They were defined as
coarse, medium and fine mesh containing
294,336, 438,167 and 825,052 elements,
respectively. When refining the mesh, additional
meshing was included in the regions of high
velocity gradient around the impeller and
discharge zone. A sample line which passes
through two points (0.16, 0, 0) and (0.16, 0,
0.464) was chosen to check the independence of
the three grids. The velocity and solid holdup
286
profiles along this line for the three grids were
compared with each other. The results showed
that the medium and fine grids made similar
predictions with the velocity discrepancy up to
3.6%. The velocity magnitude of the coarse grid
was markedly different from those of the medium
and fine meshes, with the maximum difference up
to 14.3%. The calculating time difference
between the medium and fine grids was more than
20%. Based on these results, the medium grid was
employed for the simulation in this work, as
shown in Fig. 2. Preliminary simulations were run
with water only, and the glass particles were then
introduced into the fully developed liquid flow
field to calculate the solid suspension.
Fig. 2 Mesh of solution domain.
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Flow field
The single liquid phase flow in a vessel equipped
with four side-entry impellers has been discussed
and the CFD simulation of flow field was
validated using the PIV experiment data by Fang
et al. (2011). Figures 3a and b show the velocity
vectors of liquid phase on the X-Z plane for the
liquid-only (Fang et al., 2011) and solid-liquid
(s=2%) system when the impeller speed N=400
rpm. The velocity vectors are normalized to the
impeller tip speed, Utip. The corresponding
Reynolds numbers of a single impeller for the
single phase and solid-liquid system are 66547
and 57108, respectively. The introduction of solid
particles into the fluid increases the equivalent
viscosity of fluid in the tank increased. According
to Eq. 8, the average density of the mixture m
increases but the growth amplitude of the average
viscosity of the mixture av is greater, leading to a
decrease of the Re value in the solid-liquid
system. For the liquid-only system shown in Fig.
 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 7, No. 2 (2013)

3a, a main circulation loop exists in the vessel,

which starts from the impeller, flows through the
axis of the tank up to the liquid surface, and
finally returns to the impeller suction region along
the tank wall. The center of this main circulation
loop is about 0.74H above the tank bottom. In
Fig. 3b, the introduction of the solids into the
vessel results in a decrease in the axial velocity
component compared with Fig. 3a. The impeller
generates one loop where the flow leaving the
impeller is directed downward toward the bottom
of the tank, which is directly responsible for the
suspension of the particles. The main circulation
loop reaches only about 0.7H high, with its center (a) vertical plane in Fang et al. (2011)
approximately 0.5H high. Secondary circulation
loops are revealed in the upper part of the vessel,
which are mainly circumferential flows around
the axis of the vessel. This zone has a quite low
velocity level and contains few solid particles.
There is little energy exchange between this
secondary loop zone and the main loop zone in
the lower part of the vessel. Therefore, this
secondary loop zone is not conducive to the
efficient solid-liquid mixing of the whole tank.
The liquid velocity distributions at the level of
0.215H high above the bottom for both the liquid-
only and solid-liquid systems are shown in Fig. 3c
and d, respectively. It can be seen from Fig. 3c (b) vertical plane for solid-liquid system
that, for the liquid-only system, the flow pattern at
the level of impeller mounting height is quite
complex. At the center part, an upward flow
toward the liquid surface exists. Around the
center there is an impingement region formed by
the discharge flows of the four impellers, and a
clockwise circulation loop exists in the periphery
of the plane because of the horizontally inclined
angle . When the solid was introduced, shown in
Fig. 3d, the coverage area of the four impeller
high flow zones was reduced. This is because the
drag effect of solid particles attenuates the
velocity of the impeller discharge more quickly. (c) z/H=0.215 in Fang et al. (2011)
And then the turbulent intensity around the
impeller zone is weakened. As the Re value
mainly indicates the turbulent intensity in the
tank, especially for the region around the
impeller, the introduction of solid decreases the
Re value compared with the single phase system.
The axial flow around the tank center is
weakened, and the velocity of the zones which lie
near the tank wall and between each of the two
impellers also becomes lower.
The comparison of axial velocity profiles along
two sample lines in the X-Z plane (z=0.3H and
0.7H) between the liquid-only and solid-liquid (d) z/H=0.215 for solid-liquid system
systems is shown in Fig. 4. It can be seen in Fig. Fig. 3 Flow fields in different planes for single and
4a that, at the high level of 0.3H which is within solid-liquid systems.

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 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 7, No. 2 (2013)
(a) z=0.3H
(b) z=0.7H
Fig. 4 Axial velocity profiles of liquid phase when
N=400 rpm for single and solid-liquid
systems.
Fig. 5 Particle volume fraction in X-Z plane for
N=400 rpm.
the impeller high velocity region, solid particles
have little effect on the liquid axial velocity
values around the impeller pumping flow, while
the axial flow near the vessel axis has been
greatly reduced. The magnitude of reduction
increases as the distance to the vessel axis
288
decreases. As for the high level of 0.7H shown in
Fig. 4b, the solid particles obviously affect the
liquid flow pattern. In the liquid-only system, the
pattern is a typical up-down axial flow. But in the
solid-liquid system, the axial velocity values have
been intensively reduced, most of which getting
close to zero. According to Fig. 3c, the height of
the main circulation loop is reduced to about 0.7H
high because of the solid particles. Therefore, the
0.7H high level is within the transition region of
the main circulation loop and secondary loop in
the upper part of vessel, and the flow pattern
around this level starts to change from axial loop
to circumferential loop.
4.2 Solid particle distribution
The solid suspension is generally divided into
three types: incomplete suspension, just off-
bottom suspension and homogeneous suspension.
When the spherical solid particles are
accumulated into a single layer, the maximum
solid volume fraction value is found to be no less
than /6 (approximately 0.52). So when the local
solid hold-up value is greater than 0.52, solid
sediment zone exists in the vessel. Therefore, in
this CFD simulation study, when the predicted
maximum solid volume fraction in the solution
domain is less than 0.52, no solid sediment is
expected to exist in the vessel. Fig. 5 illustrates
the contours of the solid concentrations in the X-Z
plane with the solid loading of 2 v/v% at N=400
rpm. It can be seen from Fig. 5 that the solid
concentration shows ladder-like distributions
from the tank bottom to the liquid level. The solid
concentration decreases as the distance to the
bottom increases. As the maximum solid hold-up
is over 0.52, solid sediment zones exist in the
vessel, which lie mainly behind and below the
agitator on the tank bottom, as well as the center
part of the bottom. This can be attributed to the
weak interaction between the liquid flow and the
tank bottom around these areas according to Fig.
3b. The cloud height is about 0.67H, which is
relative to the height of the main loop 0.7H in Fig.
3b, and few solid particles exist in the region
above this height. The increase of the impeller
speed makes the relative distribution of solid
concentration more uniform in the X-Z plane, and
at the same time leads to an increase of the cloud
height. The suspension height changes from
0.67H to 0.85H as the speed N increases from 400
to 600 rpm.
The solid distribution on the tank bottom obtained
from both the experiment and CFD simulation
results are shown in Fig. 6 (s=2%). It can be seen
 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 7, No. 2 (2013)
from the experimental photo in Fig. 6 that low
solid concentration areas exist below each
impeller when N=400 rpm. This is caused by the
interaction between the impeller discharge flow
and the tank bottom. However, a certain amount
of particles remains on the bottom, as this speed
was far below Njs. The sediments mainly exist in
the zones below each agitator which lie on the
opposite side of the horizontal angle , and strip
zones between each of the two impellers
interaction regions on the bottom. These regions
are all low velocity zones as shown in Fig. 3d.
The area of the sediment zones decreases with the
increase of impeller speed. When N=500 rpm, the
strip zones between impellers disappear and the
sediment zones on the side of each impeller
shrink but still exist. As N increases to 600 rpm,
the solid sediment basically disappears and the
solid particles show relatively uniform
distribution on the bottom, except for some
unstable high solid hold-up zones along the
bottom edge formed by the tank wall and tank
bottom. As for the CFD results shown also in Fig.
6, the rough position and shape of the solid
sediment zones are fairly similar to the
experimental ones. At the same impeller speed,
the area of the sediment zones obtained by the
CFD simulation is slightly lower than that of
experiment. Besides, the solid sediments along
the bottom edge formed by the tank wall and tank
bottom in the experimental picture do not exist in
the CFD results. This may be attributed to the
limitation of standard wall function used in this
simulation. Ochieng and Lewis (2006) indicated
that for low solid loading mixing (<5%) in the
stirred tank, the solid suspension theory based on
the assumption that the particles are suspended
when there is a balance between the force of the
bulk fluid acting on the particles and the
gravitational force was more reliable. While for
high solid loading systems (>10%), the
assumption that solids suspension results from the
balance between the suspension potential energy
and turbulent kinetic energy of the flow is more
suitable. It is possible that both of the two theories al. (2007). The suspension quality is quantified
work in the solid-liquid mixing system, and
whichever one plays the major role depends on
the local solid holdup in the tank. In this work, as
the global solid loading is relatively low (=2%),
= 1
the solids suspension is mainly governed by the
bulk fluid flow. At the cloud height level in the
upper region of the tank with low solid holdup,
the axial flow rate is rather low and the balance
between the upward axial velocity and the settling
velocity of the particle makes them remain at this
height, where the balance between the drag force
on the particle and the gravitational force also
exits. On the tank bottom, as the local solid
holdup and solid holdup gradient are relatively
high, the theory of turbulent dispersion energy
may play a more important role. The regions
below and between the impellers are located
between the collision zones formed by the
impeller discharge flow and the tank bottom, in
which the flow rate and turbulent kinetic energy
are relatively weak, so the particles in these
regions are most difficult to be suspended.
Fig. 6 Particle distribution on bottom of vessel by
experiment and CFD.
4.3 Solid suspension studies
The critical impeller speed for just off-bottom
suspension Njs is an important design parameter
used currently by engineers for the design and
scale-up of stirred vessels. Different criteria are
available to evaluate the Njs. In this work, it is
difficult to use Zwieterings criterion in the CFD
simulation to determine the critical impeller speed
for off-bottom suspension with the Eulerian-
Eulerian approach used. Instead, the standard
deviation method proposed by Bohnet and
Niesmak (1980) has been used, which is based on
a standard deviation of the solid concentration
and more applicable for steady state simulations.
The same methodology has successfully been
employed by Khopkar et al. (2008) and Murthy et
using the standard deviation written as
2
1 n s
n 1 avg
(14)
where n denotes the number of sampling locations
applied for measuring the solid volume fraction.
The increase in the degree of uniformity is
indicated by the decrease of the value. Based on
the suspension quality, the range of the standard
deviation is divided into three ranges. For
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homogeneous suspension, the value of the

standard deviation is lower than 0.2 (<0.2).
While for the just suspension condition, the value
of the standard deviation is between 0.2 and 0.8
(0.2<<0.8), and for the incomplete suspension,
>0.8 (Oshinowo and Bakker, 2002).
Khopkar et al. (2006 and 2008) found that the
impeller speed corresponding to =0.8 agreed
well with the critical impeller speed obtained
using the correlation proposed by Zwietering
(1958). In the present work, the standard
deviation was calculated from the values of the
solid volume fraction stored at all computational
elements using Eq. 14. The simulations of the
solid suspension (with a size 100 m and solid Fig. 7 Predicted values of standard deviation with
hold-up of 2% v/v) were carried out for impeller respect to impeller speed.
speeds ranging from 300 to 1000 rpm and the
corresponding standard deviations are shown in
Fig. 7. It can be seen that there is a sharp
reduction in the value as the impeller speed
comes close to Njs. The experimentally measured
value of Njs is 546 rpm. When the predicted value
of equals to 0.8, the corresponding impeller
speed is 531 rpm, which shows good agreement
with a deviation of about -2.75%. Therefore, the
critical impeller speed for off-bottom suspension
Njs in this calculation is considered to be reached
when the value of is 0.8. It can also be seen
from Fig. 7 that, with a further increase in the
impeller rotating speed, the value of decreases
quite slowly. The mixing system did not achieve
the homogeneous suspension even when the Fig. 8 Influence of solid loading on critical impeller
impeller speed was increased to 1000 rpm speed.
(=0.28). Therefore, it was difficult to achieve the
homogeneous suspension in the side-entering for off-bottom suspension well. The CFD
stirred vessel by means of merely increasing the predicted values of Njs are generally lower than
impeller speed. the experimental data, especially for the high
In top-entering stirred tanks with a low solid solid loading system. The critical impeller speed
loading, the critical impeller speed increases with increases with an increase of the solid loading,
an increase in the solid hold-up, the correlation and shows a linear relation in double logarithm
according to the Zwietering correlation being coordinates. Based on the experimental data, the
fitted correlation of this linear relation can be
N js 0.13 (15) represented by
Here, denotes the mass fraction of the solid. N js 0.25 (16)
The influence of the solid loading on the critical
impeller speed in the side-entering vessel was Compared with Eq. 15, the correlation between
shown in Fig. 8, with solid loadings of 1~5 v/v%, the critical impeller speed and the solid loading in
i.e., 2.5~13.2 wt%. It can be seen from Fig. 8 that the side-entering vessel is similar to that in the
good agreement exists between the CFD predicted top-entering vessel, but with a higher value of the
values and experimental values of Njs, with a exponent of the solid mass fraction . This
maximum deviation of 3.7%. Therefore, the CFD indicates that the solid loading in the side-
simulation method used in this work with the entering tank has a greater influence on the
Brucato drag model and standard deviation critical impeller speed than that in the top-
method could predict the critical impeller speed entering one.

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4.4 Effect of some installation parameters on

critical impeller speed
Concerning the structure of a side-entering stirred
tank with multi-agitators, there are some
installation parameters which have influence on
the solid suspension, including the inclined angles
and , the plunging length and mounting height
of the shaft. The downward inclined angle and
horizontally inclined angle could make impacts
on the flow pattern and thus the solid suspension
in the tank. To study the effect of the inclined
angles of the impeller on the critical impeller
speed, simulations were carried out with various
inclined angles and . Fig. 9a shows the critical
(a) different inclined angles
impeller speed variations with different
horizontally inclined angles ranging from 3 to
10 when the downward inclined angle is fixed
at 10 (s=2%). The Njs initially decreases and
then increases with an increase of the inclined
angle and the minimum speed occurs when
=5. Moreover, the difference between the
maximum value of Njs when =10 and the
minimum one is about 15.1%. The main effect of
the horizontally inclined angle is to form a
circumferential loop around the axis of tank so as
to make each of the low velocity zones between
two impellers join the main loop and keep the
particles in these zones suspended. When the
angle is too small, the solid suspension (b) different lengths of shaft l
performance in the zones between two impellers
as well as near the tank wall would be poor.
While when the angle is too large, the particles
on the center of tank bottom would be easy to
deposit. Therefore, the horizontally inclined angle
opt should have an optimum value, which is 5
according to Fig. 9a. The critical impeller speeds
with different downward inclined angles in the
range of 5 to 14 when =opt is also shown in
Fig. 9a. The trend is similar to that of but the
variation amplitude is greater, with the deviation
of the maximum from minimum value being
about 24.7%. Since the impeller is an axial flow
type one, the downward inclined angle makes
the impeller discharge stream also have a (c) different mounting heights h
downward direction, which could make more Fig. 9 Critical impeller speeds for different
solid particles suspended from the tank bottom. installation parameters.
When the angle is too small, the suspension
condition below the impellers would be poor, inclined angle , the downward inclined angle
while when the angle is too large, the bulk has a greater effect on the critical impeller speed.
circulation height would be affected and the According to engineering experience, when the
global suspension height would be reduced. plunging length of the shaft l is too short, the
Hence, the optimum angle could improve both solid suspensions on the center of the tank bottom
the suspension on the bottom of the tank and the would be weak. While when it is too long, the
suspension height, which is 10 as shown in Fig. suspension around the tank bottom would become
9a. Furthermore, compared with the horizontally poor. Fig. 9b illustrates the critical impeller

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speeds for different shaft lengths, with l/D
extending from 0.7 to 1.2 (s=2%), when the
inclined angles and are fixed at 10 and 5,
respectively. The optimum shaft length l should
be 0.9D, and the difference between the
maximum and the minimum speed is 29.7%. Fig.
9c shows the critical impeller speeds for the
mounting height h/D in the range of 0.7 to 1.2
(s=2%), when =10, =5 and l=0.9D. As
shown in Fig. 9c, the mounting height h also has a
significant effect on the critical impeller speed.
High h/D ratio is particularly bad for the solid
suspension, because it could make the collision
between the impeller discharge flows and the tank
bottom weaker. The optimum mounting height h
is 1.2D, and the maximum speeds difference is
34.6%.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The solid-liquid flow and solid suspension in a
cylindrical stirred tank equipped with four side-
entering impellers were investigated by
experimental and CFD simulation methods.
Experiments were carried out to characterize the
regularity of the solid sediment distribution on the
tank bottom and critical impeller speed for off-
bottom suspension. The Eulerian-Eulerian two-
phase model, standard k- turbulence model and
the Brucato drag model have been used to
perform the solid-liquid simulation using the
software Fluent 6.3. Based on the validation by
the experimentally measured results, the model
was further extended to discuss the influence of
some installation parameters including the
inclined angles and , the plunging length l and
mounting height h of the shaft on the critical
impeller speed. The key conclusions are listed as
follows:
1. Compared with the single phase system, the
introduction of solid particles resulted in an
attenuation in the axial liquid flow in the side-
entering stirred tank. The coverage range of the
main circulation loop was reduced from the whole
tank to the suspension zone. A secondary
circulation loop was revealed to exist in the upper
part of the tank, which was mainly
circumferential flow around the axis of the vessel.
2. The solid concentration decreased as the
distance to the tank bottom increased, showing a
ladder like distribution in the vertical direction.
When the impeller speed was lower than Njs, the
solid sediment mainly existed in the zones below
each agitator and between each of the two
impeller interaction areas on the tank bottom. The
rough position and shape of the solid sediment
292
zones by the CFD simulation are similar to the
experimental ones, with the CFD model slightly
under-predicting the sediment area value.
3. The CFD predicted critical impeller speeds
agreed well with the experimentally measured
ones for different solid loadings, with a maximum
deviation of 3.7%. Meanwhile, the predicted
values of Njs were generally lower than the
experimental data, especially for the high solid
loading system. The solid loading has a greater
influence on the critical impeller speed in the
side-entering stirred tank than that in the top-
entering tank.
4. Compared with the horizontally inclined angle
, the downward inclined angle has a greater
effect on the critical impeller speed and the
optimum angles opt and opt of the mixer shaft are
10 and 5 in this work, respectively. The
plunging length l and mounting height h also have
significant effects on the critical impeller speed
and the optimum l/D and h/D ratios are 0.9 and
1.2, respectively.
Despite some deficiencies, the computational
model developed in the present study successfully
captured the key features of the solid suspension
in this side-entering stirred tank, and thus could
be useful for the design and optimization of
stirred tanks with side-entering agitators.
However, a highly accurate measurement
technique for solid volume fraction is required in
order to obtain detailed information about the
solid distribution in the side-entering stirred tank.
Further work needs to be carried out to investigate
the influence of D/T ratio and tank scale on the
solid suspension in the side-entering stirred tank.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors thank the Innovation Project of
Graduate Students of Jiangsu Province of China
(Grant No.CX09B_130Z) and Science-
Technology Project of Jiangsu Province of China
(Grant No.be2007076) for their support.
NOMENCLATURE
CD drag coefficient
CD0 drag coefficient in stagnant liquid
CTD coefficient for turbulent dispersion
D impeller diameter, m
Dm diffusion coefficient
dp diameter of solid particle, m
FB centrifugal and Coriolis forces, N/m3
FI interfacial force, N/m3
FD drag force, N/m3
 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 7, No. 2 (2013)

FND non-drag force, N/m3 Engineering Applications of Computational

FTD turbulent dispersion force, N/m3 Fluid Mechanics 3(1):135-146.
FL lift force, N/m3 2. Alajbegovic A, Drew DA, Lahey RTJ (1999).
FVM virtual mass force, N/m3 An analysis of phase distribution and
Gkm turbulence generation, (kgm)/s3 turbulence structure in dispersed particle
g acceleration of gravity, m/s2 liquid flows. Chemical engineering
H tank height, m Communications 174(1):85-133.
h mounting height of agitator, m 3. Aubin J, Fletcher DF, Xuereb C (2004).
k turbulent kinetic energy, m2/s2 Modeling turbulent flow in stirred tanks with
l shaft length stretched into the tank, m CFD: the influence of the modeling approach,
N impeller rotational speed, /s turbulence model and numerical scheme.
Njs critical impeller speed, /s Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science
p pressure, Pa 28:431-445.
R impeller radius, m 4. Bohnet M, Niesmak G (1980). Distribution of
Re Reynolds number solids in stirred suspension. German
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particle Reynolds number
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Subscripts
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