Energy efficiency of a deep hollow bladed impeller for mixing viscoplastic fluids in a cylindrical vessel

Abstract

The energy efficiency of a deep hollow blade disk turbine in unbaffled mixing vessel is determined in this article via numerical simulations. The vessel is filled with xanthan gum solutions, which have a shear thinning behavior with yield stress (viscoplastic). The Herschel-Bulkley law is used to model the fluid behavior. Three-dimensional calculations are achieved by the computer tool CFX (version 16.0), and the computational domain is meshed using the software ICEM CFD (version 16.0). Mixing is achieved at low impeller rotational speeds which correspond to the laminar and transitional flow regimes. Our main purpose is to explore the effect of blade size (width and height), Reynolds number, and fluid properties on the mixing efficiency of deep hollow bladed impellers. A validation test of our predicted results with experimental data of a previous study was done, and it has shown a good agreement.