Three-Dimensional Numerical Simulation and Performance Study of an Industrial Helical Static Mixer

Abstract

Viscous liquids have to be homogenized in continuous operations in many branches of processing industries. Consequently, fluid mixing plays a critical role in the success or failure of many industrial processes. The use of static mixers has been utilized over a wide range of applications such as continuous mixing, blending, heat and mass transfer processes, chemical reactions, etc. This paper illustrates how static mixing processes of single-phase viscous liquids can be simulated numerically, and presents the flow pattern of both Newtonian and non-Newtonian single-phase liquids through a helical static mixer, and provides useful information that can be extracted from the simulation results. Three-dimensional finite volume simulations are used to study the performance of the mixer. The CFD code used here solves the Navier-Stokes equations for both laminar and turbulent flow cases. The turbulent flow cases were solved using k–ω and Reynolds Stress models. The flow properties are calculated for both Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids. The calculated pressure drop is in good agreement with existing experimental data.