Periodic Behaviour of Mean Velocity Fields in Rushton Turbine (RT) Driven Stirred Tank

Abstract

The present study predicts the periodic behavior of mean velocity fields from the properly verified and validated CFD model to determine the extent of vortex and turbulent activity in a baffled tank stirred by standard six bladed Rushton Turbine. This region includes most of the vortex and turbulent action that controls the mixing and mass transfer processes in the stirred tank. The complexity of periodicity of mean radial and tangential velocities in the radial direction and mean axial velocity in the axial direction is used to fix the proper radial as well as axial extents of the vortex generated by RT. The extent of flow periodicity in the present stirred tank configuration is confined within a cylindrical region around the impeller of radius 0.753 times the impeller diameter and a height of 0.323 times the impeller diameter above and below the impeller center plane.

Keywords

• CFD
• Turbulent flow
• Baffled stirred tank
• Periodicity