A Numerical Study of the Heat Transfer Rate in a Helical Static Mixer

Abstract

In chemical processing industries, heating, cooling and other thermal processing of viscous fluids are an integral part of the unit operations. Static mixers are often used in continuous mixing, heat transfer, and chemical reactions applications. In spite of wide spread usage, the flow physics of static mixers is not fully understood. For a given application, besides experimentation, the modern approach to resolve this is to use powerful computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools to study static mixer performance. This paper extends a previous study by the authors on an industrial helical static mixer and investigates heat transfer and mixing mechanisms within a helical static mixer. A three-dimensional finite volume simulation is used to study the performance of the mixer. The effects of different flow conditions on the performance of the mixer are studied. Heat transfer rates for a flow in a pipe containing no mixer is compared to that with a helical static mixer.