Performance of new designed anchor impellers in stirred tanks

Mixing with mechanically stirred tanks is a process extensively used in different industrial processes, the choice of the mixing system changes with the application (homogenization, heat transfer, dispersion of a gaseous phase in a liquid, emulsion, etc.). The flow topology strongly depends on geometrical configurations and the fluid characteristics. In this study, we used Ansys CFX 18.0 to investigate the effects of the anchor geometry, the number of blades and their inclination inside a stirred tank for low Reynolds numbers varying from 0.1 to 60. The obtained results revealed a good enhancement of fluid flows in the vessel volume with the new suggested design. Increasing the number of blades with inclination was found to be efficient to improve the mixing characteristics. Also, the comparison between the rectangular, octagonal and circular shapes of blades revealed that the octagonal shape (A-8b) yields the widest well-stirred region over the other cases, but the lowest power consumption is achieved with circular shape of blades.