CFD Modelling and Simulation of Jet Mixed Tanks

AbstractMixing is one of the common unit operations employed in chemical industries. Conventional mixers are equipped with impellers but are expensive for mixing in large storage tanks and underground tanks. Jet mixers have become an alternative to impellers for over 50 years in the process industry. For the design of jet mixers, much experimental work has been done and many correlations have been proposed. However, these correlations are case specific and are not valid for any generic mixer. In order to establish a generic model for jet mixers, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is employed to understand the mixing phenomena and to find out the time required for mixing in a jet mixed tank. The 3D simulations are carried out using the CFD package FLUENT 6.2 to generate data and validate them against experimental results. The turbulence model engaged is the standard k-ε model, which is found to show good agreement between the experimental results and simulated results for Reynolds number of 10000 and above. A parametric sensitivity analysis is done by changing various parameters to understand how the mixing phenomenon is affected. The results obtained are explained, and conclusions are drawn. The results obtained give a good understanding of the mixing process in jet mixed tanks.Keywords: jet mixingCFDflow patternmixing timeparametric sensitivity