An effect of the tubular baffles configuration in an agitated vessel with a high-speed impeller on the power consumption

Gas–liquid mixing in the stirred tank equipped with semi-circular tube baffles

Despite extensive contributions have been made over the past several decades, there are still ongoing challenges in improving gas dispersion performance in stirred tanks. To that end, a stirred tank equipped with four semi-circular (SC) tube baffles was designed. Hydrodynamics in the stirred tank before and after aeration were studied. The turbulent fluid flow was simulated using the standard k-ε turbulence model. The gas–liquid two-phase flow was simulated by the Eulerian–Eulerian multiphase model and the k-ε dispersed turbulence model. The impeller rotation was modeled with the multiple reference frame (MRF) approach. Firstly, the grid independence test was made. By comparing the distributions of gas holdup in the flat-plate (FP) baffled stirred tank with literature results, the reliability of the numerical model and simulation method was verified. Subsequently, the flow field, gas holdup and power consumption of the SC and FP configurations were studied, respectively. Results show that the former can increase the fluid velocities and promote the gas holdup dispersion. Besides, it is energy-saving and has a higher relative power demand (RPD). The findings obtained here lay a preliminary foundation for the potential application of the SC configuration in the process industry.

Impact of baffle geometry on the fluid motion in the stirred vessel

The fluids mixing is a crucial operation in a large number of engineering systems. It has major significance in chemical engineering, food, cosmetics and pharmaceutics production, biotechnology, wastewater treatment engineering, and countless other applications. Among many available systems online mixing with static mixers and stirred tanks plays a primary role and has been developed to meet several processing objectives. The effectiveness of the mixing process depends on a number of parameters, i.e. impeller shape, mixing phases properties, process conditions as well as stirred vessel design - in particular, number and baffles’ design. The optimal baffles geometry is still an open issue and is usually design with trial and error methods. In this study, the focus is on the experimental investigations of the baffle geometry on the fluid flow and mixing phenomenon as well as on the required by the mixer power. In order to evaluate velocity field and mixing parameters, particle image velocimetry measurement is used whereas to obtain the power consumption by the stirred vessel precise torque meters were used. Measurements are carried out for different Reynolds numbers, to determine the most efficient process parameters. It has been shown that for the analyzed range of Reynolds numbers, the baffles design significantly influences fluid flow motion, mixing phenomena and the pumping number power number, but not affect the power number.

An Investigation of Heat Transfer Performance in an Agitated Vessel

Agitated vessels (or mechanically stirred reactors) are heat exchange devices that are most widely used in many chemical and biochemical process industries, such as anaerobic digestion process. The mixing and heat transfer performances in these vessels are of crucial importance for increasing the energy efficiency in both batch and continuous processes. In this paper, a series of experiments were conducted to investigate heat transfer performance in agitated vessels for various configurations. In fact, this study examines the effects of heat transfer geometry (wall jacket and helical coils), heating power, and stirring speed, on the heating performance of two stirred fluids—water alone and a mixture of water and food waste. The experiments were conducted using a jacketed insulation tank with a helical coil and a propeller agitator. In each experiment, a transient method, based on measuring the temperature dependency on time, and solving the unsteady enthalpy balance, was used to determine the overall heat transfer coefficients between the agitated fluid and the heating surface. Finally, an extensive analysis of the reduced data was conducted based on temperature, heating time, heat transfer rate, heat transfer coefficient, and thermal resistance. The main finding was that the presence of food waste in agitated vessels reduces the heat rate of the agitated fluid with an average of 18.13% and 49.51%, respectively, for the case of JHX and CHX, and creates additional fouling, which further limits the heat transfer.