A scalable model for mixing vessels
- Flow Science, Inc., Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Stir-tank reactors, which are tanks containing a variety off impellers, baffles and inlet/outlet ports, are notoriously difficult systems to scale up from laboratory and prototype test configurations to full scale production sizes. The problem is associated with the difficulty of simultaneously scaling free-surface, rotational, viscous and other dynamic processes in such a way as to maintain similarity in all flow features. In this presentation the authors describe a new computational model for impellers that may be economically used to simulate stir-tank reactor flow fields. The model is based on some simple, yet powerful, ideas and uses in its definition scalable geometric and rotation-rate data. An essential feature of the impeller model is that it allows the impeller flow it generates to be influenced by such things as the close proximity of a tank wall, other impellers or a free surface. In this sense, the impeller model is more capable of being accurately scaled than previously reported impeller models. Results for a pitched-blade impeller are compared with published experimental data. Some qualitative results are presented illustrating how the model may be used and how generalizations of the model may be made to include approximate time-dependent effects in the vicinity of individual impeller blades.
- OSTI ID:
- 110040
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-940659--; ISBN 0-7918-1369-X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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