Mourad Heniche1, Jean-Sebastien Cagnone1, Philippe A. Tanguy1, and Katsuhide Takenaka2. (1) Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Unité de Recherche sur les Procédés d'Écoulements Industriels (URPEI), École Polytechnique de Montréal, P.O. Box 6079, Station Centre-Ville, Montréal, QC H3C 3A7, Canada, (2) Engineering Department, SHI Mechanical & Equipment, 1501, Imazaike, Saijo-city, Ehime 799-1393, Japan
The Dispersion of solids and liquids is among the numerous applications carried out in stirred tanks. The objective of this work is to present the numerical solid-liquid characterization of a vessel stirred by a Sumitomo Maxblend impeller. This impeller belongs to the new class of flat impellers design shape. To enable its numerical characterization in solid-liquid mixing applications, two models have been retained namely the Phillips and the network-of-zones models. These models are implemented in POLY3D (Rheosoft) a 3D CFD finite element mixing software. In this study, laminar and transition regimes have been considered under transient mixing conditions. To highlight the performance of the Maxblend, the following criteria have been selected: flow patterns, pumping capabilities, shear field, power consumption, particle distribution and mixing time. During the presentation, the numerical model used as well as predicted results to assess the performance of this recent impeller will be discussed.