Simulation of Multiphase Flow in Stirred Tank of Nonstandard Design

Abstract

Stirred tanks are commonly utilized in food, pharmaceutical and chemical industries. Most engineering applications make use of more or less standard design of a tank based on typical dimensions and shapes of key parts of the tank, which include diameter and shape of the stirred vessel, number, type and diameter of impellers and number, dimensions and shape of baffles.
The present work deals with a nonstandard stirred tank in terms of the geometrical configuration. The tank is used in pharmaceutical industry for processing eggshells. Computational Fluid Dynamics is employed to analyse flow conditions in the stirred tank during a batch process. Volume of fluid model is used to predict generation of the central vortex. Effects of various baffling (number and pitch angles) on the predicted flow field and central vortex shape are studied. All simulations are performed under typical operational conditions of the process such as an impeller speed and water volume.