0000000000814498
AUTHOR
K.c. Lee
An experimental study of double-to-single-loop transition in stirred vessels
The velocity characteristics of the flows in a fully baffled vessel of diameter T = 290 mm stirred by a Rushton impeller of diameter D = T/3 were investigated by means of laser-Doppler anemometry measurements. The effects of clearance and rotational speed on the flow patterns in the vessel were studied. It was found that at impeller clearances from the bottom of the vessel (C) around 0.2 T the characteristic double-loop flow pattern undergoes a transition to a single-loop one with the impeller stream direction becoming partly axial and being inclined at around 25 to 30° to the horizontal. The impeller stream inclination varied with radial distance from the impeller, as well as with angular …
Numerical simulations of the dependency of flow pattern on impeller clearance in stirred vessels
The flow and turbulence fields in a fully baffled vessel stirred by a Rushton turbine have been simulated by means of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques. The simulation techniques adopted (the "Sliding-grid" and "Inner-outer" methods) are fully predictive and require no experimental data as boundary or initial conditions. The effect of clearance (C) on the flow patterns in stirred vessels was simulated as the flow field transition observed can be considered a particularly stringent benchmark for the testing of CFD techniques. The results are compared with previously obtained LDA data and show that the double- to single-loop transition experimentally observed when impeller clearan…
Experiments and predictions of the transition of the flow pattern with impeller clearance in stirred tanks
In the present work, the double- to single-loop flow pattern transition in a stirred vessel equipped with a Rushton turbine is investigated by Laser Doppler anemometry (LDA). In particular, the clearance at which such transition occurs is assessed by comparing axial velocity profiles underneath the impeller. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of the same system are carried out, by employing the 'inner-outer' fully predictive computation strategy. The comparison of predicted results with the experimental data collected shows that the transition is well reproduced by simulations. A good agreement on the mean velocities is also observed but for the impeller discharge stream angle t…