Flow patterns in eccentric stirred vessels

Abstract

Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, South Africa, 1-4 July, 2007.

Mixing in stirred vessels is commonly carried at low to moderate Reynolds number. Under steady stirring conditions (impeller centered with respect to the vessel centerline and rotating in one direction) well mixed regions around the impeller and isolated regions far from the impeller are formed into the vessel. Such regions can be gradually vanished if the flow is continuously perturbed, which is some cases can be done by displacing the impeller from the vessel centerline. This paper describes an experimental analysis based on Newtonian flow fields observed by particle image velocimetry in a stirred vessel with the impeller placed eccentrically with respect to the vessel centerline.