Hydrodynamics of solid and liquid phases in a mixing tank containing high solid loading slurry of large particles via tomography and computational fluid dynamics

Abstract

The main goal of this study was to assess the turbulent and hydrodynamics of the mixing of high solid loading slurries of large particles. To determine the state of homogeneity in the slurry tank, electrical resistance tomography was adopted. A computational fluid dynamics model was developed by employing the Eulerian-Eulerian multiphase model and the sliding mesh technique to explore the suspension of the large particles in the highly concentrated slurry tank. The influences of the solid loading, particle size, and impeller clearance on the homogeneity, just-suspended speed, power consumption, axial and radial velocities of the solid phase, and turbulent energy dissipation were assessed. It was found that the radial and axial velocities of the solid phase attained below the impeller plane at the just-suspended impeller speed were promoted by decreasing the particle size and increasing the solids loading while they were reduced with an increase in the impeller clearance.