Optimal nozzle configuration of mixing vessels using CFD

Abstract

The mixing with mechanical agitator has the unavoidable leakage problem at the trim of agitator stem under high pressure. This leakage is not desirable from the viewpoint of economics and safety. One of the suggestions for the problem is to eliminate mechanical assemblies from mixing vessels and to drive mixing with jet. In most process vessels without agitator, feed flow plays the primary role of mixing the vessel content. Hence the product quality is closely related to the configuration of injection and product nozzles. The configuration concerns the location of nozzles. This work tried to show mixing tendency with the relative configuration of each nozzle and to find the configuration of the best mixing performance, using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) technique and numerical optimization.