Snow/water mixing performance of various stirring blades for a vertical type snow feeder.

Abstract

Ten stirring blades were experimentally investigated to develop a snow feeder which mixes snow and water with a vertical stirrer and feeds it into a snow conveying pipeline. Ribbon screws, straight-blade paddles and turbines showed increasingly good performance in power consumption and critical snow fraction of mixing in that order. In terms of the mixing rate, however, straight-blade paddles anchor blades, turbines and ribbon screws were better in that order. On the other hand, blades inducing axial flow, e. g. pitched-blade paddles or propeller blades or inducing centripetal flow, e. g. curved-blade paddles or brumagin type impellers, were worse for every aspect of mixing performance. Taking other factors such as safety into consideration, we have concluded that a straight-blade paddle is most recommendable for the stirring blade of a snow feeder.