WHAT IS MIXING ?

Mixing is defined as the reduction of in homogeneity in order to achieve a desired process result.
The primary objective of the mixing is to a homogeneous mixture, generally this means, attaining a nearly uniform distribution of the in gradients. The in homogeneity can be one of concentration, phase, or temperature. Secondary effects, such as mass transfer, reaction, and product properties are usually the critical objectives.

MIXING TANK

Agitated mixers are increasingly used to perform a variety of mixing tasks such as chemical products, food, biochemical, pharmaceutical, medicine, energy, environment protection, dealing with fining, homogenizing, dissolution, gas dispersion, solid suspension, heat transfer and diffusive transport of multiple raw materials.

GEOMETRY OF MIXING TANK

A conventional stirred tank consists of a vessel equipped with a rotating mixer. The vessel is generally a vertical cylindrical tank. Nonstandard vessels such as those with square or rectangular cross-section, or horizontal cylinder vessels are sometimes used. The rotating mixer has several components: an impeller, shaft, shaft seal, gearbox, and a motor drive. Wall baffles are generally installed for transitional and turbulent mixing to prevent solid body rotation (sometimes called fluid swirl) and cause axial mixing between the top and

MIXING MECHANISMS

Dispersion or diffusion is the act of spreading out. Molecular diffusion is diffusion caused by relative molecular motion and is characterized by the molecular diffusivity. Eddy diffusion or turbulent diffusion is dispersion in turbulent flows caused by the motions of large groups of molecules called eddies; this motion is measured as the turbulent velocity fluctuations. Convection (or bulk diffusion) is dispersion caused by bulk motion. Taylor dispersion is a special case of convection, where the dispersion is caused by a mean velocity gradient. It is most often referred to in the case of laminar pipe flow, where axial dispersion arises due to the parabolic velocity gradient in the pipe.

MEASURES OF MIXEDNESS

Scale of segregation is a measure of the large scale breakup process (bulk and eddy diffusivity) without the action of diffusion. It is the size of the packets of B that can be distinguished from the surrounding fluid A.
Intensity of segregation is a measure of the difference in concentration between the purest concentration of B and the purest concentration of A in the surrounding fluid. Molecular diffusion is needed to reduce the intensity of segregation, as even the smallest turbulent eddies have a very large diameter relative to the size of a molecule.

RESIDENCE TIME DISTRIBUTION

Residence time distributions represent the first generation of mixing models. The residence time distribution measures features of ideal or non ideal flows associated with the bulk flow patterns or macromixing in a reactor or other process vessel. In RTD analysis, a tracer is injected into the flow and the concentration of tracer in the outlet line is recorded over time. When the mixing is ideal or close to ideal and the reaction kinetics are known, the RTD can be used to obtain explicit solutions for the reactor yield . The chief weakness of RTD analysis is that from the diagnostic perspective, an RTD study can identify whether the mixing is ideal or non ideal, but it is not able to uniquely determine the nature of the non ideality. Residence time distributions are the first characteristic of mixing. The characteristic time scale for a residence time distribution is the mean residence time of the vessel. The characteristic length scale is the vessel diameter, or volume. The conclusion is that improvements in CFD codes and still faster computers are needed for accurate design calculations in complex geometries. Residence time calculations will be a useful tool for their validation.

MIXING PARAMETERS

Parameters that are used to characterize stirred tank flows and mixing processes in general can be computed by correlations, these parameters can also be computed from the CFD results. Power Number: The power number is a dimensionless parameter that provides a measure of the power requirements for the operation of an impeller. It is defined as

Where P is the power applied to the impeller of diameter D, the density, and N the impeller rotation speed in Hertz.

The power delivered to the fluid is the product of the impeller speed, 2N, in rad/s, and torque, , which is obtained by integration of the pressure on the impeller blade: P = 2N Reports are usually available for the torque delivered to the fluid by the impeller. In some cases, reports of power or even power number can be obtained from the software. The power delivered to the mixer is equivalent to that lost or dissipated in the fluid. An integration of both the viscous and turbulent dissipation throughout the volume should, therefore, be an acceptable way to compute the power draw. The dissipation rate predicted by the various turbulence models can vary significantly, however, and there is no guarantee that the turbulence model that gives the best flow pattern prediction also gives the best dissipation rate prediction. For laminar flows, even with a refined mesh near the impeller blades, CFD can have difficulty predicting viscous dissipation in a satisfactory manner. For this reason, the best method for extracting the power drawn by the impeller is by calculation of the torque on the blade surfaces.

Flow Number: The flow number is a measure of the pumping capacity of an impeller. Different measures for pumping capacity exist, but the flow number is used widely. It is defined as In this expression, Ql is the flow rate produced by the impeller. The subscript is used to ensure that the flow rate for the liquid phase alone is used in the calculation. To compute Ql for an impeller, a surface needs to be created for the discharge region. This surface would be circular 9 for an axial flow impeller and a section of cylinder wall for a radial flow impeller. By integrating the total outflow through this surface, the flow rate, Ql, and subsequently the flow number, NQ, can be obtained.

Evaluating Mixing Time: Transient blending calculation is used to evaluate the time required to achieve a certain level of blending. When a tracer is added to a fluid in a mixing tank, the transient calculation can be made exclusive of the flow field calculation if the properties of the tracer and background liquid are identical. When this is the case, a steady-state calculation can be performed for the background liquid using either experimental data or the MRF method.

SCOPE OF MIXING OPERATIONS

Mixing plays in important role in wide range of process industries:

Fine Chemicals Pharmaceuticals Agrichemicals Petrochemicals Biotechnology Polymer processing Paints and automotive finishes Cosmetics and consumer products Food Drinking water and wastewater treatment Pulp and paper Mineral processing

PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS AND RANGES OF APPLICATION

The performance of stirred vessels is characterized on the basis of the process result for the mixing operation. LIQUID BLENDING Mutually soluble liquids are blended to provide a desired degree of uniformity in an acceptable mixing time. An efficient mixer design is important for good product quality at a high production rate. The critical issues that need to be addressed include number of liquids and their volumes, tank configuration, batch mixing times or residence time distribution in a continuous system, and physical properties. Mixing system designs fall into two main categories based on liquid viscosity. Low to medium viscosity liquids up to 10,000 cP can be blended effectively by internal pumping action from turbine impellers. For higher viscosity liquids, discharge stream velocity from a turbine dissipates rapidly, resulting in poor homogeneity and very long blend times. Such systems require the use of close clearance impellers, such as helical ribbons.

Mixing of low to medium viscosity liquids occurs at two levels: macromixing and micromixing. Macromixing is established by the mean convective flow divided in different circulation loops between which the material is exchanged. Micromixing occurs because of turbulent diffusion between small cells in the fluid causing intermingling of molecules. The selection of mixer type for blending depends on the tank size and configuration. For large blending tanks, typically larger than 30 ft in diameter, side entering propeller (SEP) mixers are recommended. Small tanks can be equipped with top-entering mixers with one or more impellers on the shaft. SEP mixers are useful for homogenizing two or more liquids in terms of temperature and physical properties.

SOLID SUSPENSION

Stirred tanks are commonly used for suspending both types of solids, sinking and floating. Suspending solid particles in a turbulent liquid can be considered as balancing of energy supplied by a rotating impeller and energy needed to lift and suspend solids. Industrial applications requiring adequate mixing of solids in liquids include coal slurries, catalystpolymer systems, solids dissolution, crystallization, paper pulp, ore slurrying for leaching, and so on. Axial flow impellers with high pumping efficiencies are most suitable for solids suspension. These impellers generate a flow pattern which sweeps the tank bottom and suspends the solids. An effective mixing system consists of a tank with dished or ellipsoidal bottom head, a down pumping axial flow impeller, four wall baffles having width equal to T/12, a baffle wall clearance of about 1.5% T, and an impeller bottom clearance equal to T/4. A variety of mixing issues need to be addressed when mixing floating solids. The mixing requirements vary from just dispersion to complete slurry homogeneity, solids wetting, shearing, and breakup of agglomerates. If the solids are sticky, such as polymers, they can agglomerate and accumulate on the impellers, baffles, and supports.

IMMISCIBLE LIQUIDLIQUID MIXING Intermixing of equally insoluble liquids can be achieved in stirred tanks with turbine impellers for the purpose of creating large enhancements in interfacial area. Mixing operation boosts the rate of mass transfer and reaction. These operations are frequently encountered in industries such as chemical, petroleum, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, food, and mining. Several reacting and nonreacting systems include extraction, alkylation, suspension polymerization, emulsification, and phase transfer catalysis. Energy spent in maximizing the liquidliquid interfacial area is generally cheaper than the improved process result. Optimization of mixing energy is necessary because too much energy can create undesirable process results. It can create highly stable emulsions and generate excessive heat, which may have adverse impact on product quality and it can also cause foaming and vapor entrainment from the headspace through the vortex, which can seriously affect liquidliquid dispersion. Turbine impellers provide the desired mixing conditions for contacting of immiscible liquids. low shear hydrofoils can be used for coarse dispersions. Axial and radial flow impellers are effective for fine emulsions. High-shear impellers are necessary for preparing stable emulsions

GASLIQUID DISPERSION

Mechanically agitated gasliquid contactors are widely used in industrial processes for absorption, stripping, oxidation, hydrogenation, chlorination, carbonylation, fermentation, and so on. They are also used for carrying out biochemical processes such as aerobic fermentation, manufacture of protein, and wastewater treatment. Disk turbine impellers are the most suitable type for gasliquid dispersion. The disk is useful in forcing the sparged gas bubbles to move through high shear zones near the impeller blade tip. This impeller characteristic reflects the maximum rate of gas sparging before the mixer approaches the flooding regime. Although all turbine impellers can be used to disperse gas, axial flow impellers are inferior to radial flow impellers .Down-pumping axial flow impellers can create an unstable hydrodynamic regime due to opposite and out-of-phase frequencies of liquid pumping and bubble rise. This can cause severe torque fluctuations and mechanical vibrations. There are three types of gas-inducing mixing systems: a hollow shaft/impeller, axial flow impellers with narrow baffles, and Praxair AGR system. A hollow shaft/impeller system uses the acceleration of the liquid over the blades to reduce the pressure locally at an orifice

IMPELLER TYPES: The typical impellers used in transitional and turbulent mixing are listed below. These have been divided into different general classes, based on flow patterns, applications, and special geometries. The classifications also define application types for which these impellers are used.