Large eddy simulations of a brine-mixing tank

Traditionally, solid-liquid mixing has always been regarded as an empirical technology with many aspects of mixing, dispersing and contacting where related to power draw. One important application of solid-liquid mixing is the preparation of brine from sodium formate. This material has been widely used as a drilling and completion fluid in challenging environments such as in the Barents Sea. In this paper large-eddy simulations, of a turbulent flow in a solid-liquid, baffled, cylindrical mixing vessel with a large number of solid particles, are performed to obtain insight into the fundamental aspects of a mixing tank. The impeller-induced flow at the blade tip radius is modeled by using the dynamic-mesh Lagrangian method. The simulations are four-way coupled, which implies that both solid-liquid and solid-solid interactions are taken into account. By employing a soft particle approach the normal and tangential forces are calculated acting on a particle due to viscoelastic contacts with other neighboring particles. The results show that the granulated form of sodium formate may provide a mixture that allows faster and easier preparation of formate brine in a mixing tank. In addition it is found that exceeding a critical size for grains phenomena, such as caking, can be prevented. The obtained numerical results suggest that by choosing appropriate parameters a mixture can be produced that remains free-flowing no matter how long it is stored before use.