(506b) The Effect of Reduced Baffling on the Mixing Characteristics of a Retreat Blade Impeller Agitated Tank

The propensity of certain industrial liquids to foul vessel internals has resulted in a reduction in baffling within some commercial production plants. Often, only one or two glass-coated baffles are installed which do not reach to the bottom of the reactor where the impeller is located. These designs can result in strongly swirling flow patterns during the initial phase of a semi-batch process. This presentation will discuss the effect on mixing characteristics of various levels of baffling (size, type, and number of baffles) in a cylindrical tank agitated by a single retreat-curve impeller. Laboratory scale mixing time studies, mixing correlations for agitated vessels, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations will be used to characterize the flow and mixing.