The present work deals with agitation of non-Newtonian fluids in a stirred vessel by Scaba impellers. A commercial CFD package (CFX 12.0) was used to solve the 3D hydrodynamics and to characterise at every point flow patterns especially in the region swept by the impeller. A shear thinning fluid with yield stress was modelled. The influence of agitator speed, impeller location and blade size on the fluid flow and power consumption was investigated. The results obtained are compared with available experimental data and a good agreement is observed. It was found that an increase in blade size is beneficial to enlargement of the well stirred region, but that results in an increased power consumption. A short distance between the impeller and the tank walls limits the flow around the agitator and yields higher power consumption. Thus, the precise middle of the tank is the most appropriate position for this kind of impeller.

Knowledge of the fluid dynamic characteristics in a stirred vessel is essential for reliable design and scale-up of a mixing system. In this paper, 3D hydrodynamics in a vessel agitated by a Rushton turbine were numerically studied (with the help of a CFD computer program (CFX 13.0)). The study was carried out covering a wide Reynolds number range: 104 - 105. Computations, based on control volume method, were made using the k-ε model. Our main purpose was to investigate the effect of vessel configuration and agitation rates on the flow structure and power consumption. Three types of vessels were used: unbaffled, baffled and a vessel with slots placed at the external perimeter of its vertical wall. The effect of slot length has been investigated. The comparison of our predicted results with available experimental data shows a satisfactory agreement.

This paper is concerned with the rotational motion of the impeller and the thermal buoyancy within a mechanical mixer. The task was investigated numerically using the ANSYS-CFX simulator. The programmer is based on the finite volume method to solve the differential equations of fluid motion and heat transfer. The impeller has hot surfaces while the vessel has cold walls. The rotational movement of the impeller was controlled by the Reynolds number, while the intensity of the thermal buoyancy effect was controlled by the Richardson number. The equations were solved for a steady flow. After analyzing the results of this research, we were able to conclude that there is no effect of the values of Richardson number on the power number. Also, with the presence of the thermal buoyancy effect, the quality of the fluid mixing becomes more important. The increasing Richardson number increases the value of the Nusselt number of the impeller.