Comparison and estimation on deagglomeration performance of batch high shear mixers for nanoparticle suspensions

Abstract

The deagglomeration performance of batch HSM was investigated including the effect of major operating and structural parameters through the experiments assisted with CFD simulation, as well as deagglomeration mechanism and the smallest attainable size of the agglomerates. The deagglomeration mechanism in batch HSM was dominated by erosion, and the smallest attainable size is stable at 131 nm under all the experimental operating and structural parameters of rotor–stator head. The results indicate that the optimization on the operating and structural parameters including increasing rotor speed, rotor teeth number and rotor teeth height, as well as reducing shear gap, can usefully intensify the deagglomeration performance of batch HSM. The rotor–stator head with the standard vertical teeth is more suitable than forward and backward bending teeth for promoting deagglomeration process due to its strong collision and shear effect and ability to provide high turbulent kinetic energy dissipation in the stator side slotting. At last, establishing the ANN model is a useful approach to estimate the d32 for the whole suspension correlated with the major operating and structural parameters.