Numerical Simulation of No-Newtonian Fluids in Stirred-Tank with proximity impellers

Many industrial applications involve stirred tanks with no-Newtonian rheology; hence the understanding of those mixing systems is required to improve final products. The present work aims to simulate the hydrodynamic no-Newtonian mixing system comprised of three impellers named: U-Type Anchor, Simple Hybrid, and Anchor with radial counterflow. As an industrial application, the water properties were considered for the Newtonian fluid, the ketchup and melted chocolate are used for shear-thinning and shear-thickening no-Newtonian fluids respectively. The performance is evaluated using power consumption, the homogeneity of concentration, velocity vector fields, and numerical mixing time. A modified version of the DualSPHysics code has been used to obtain the concentration fields and numerical mixing time. For the power consumption, the Herschel–Bulkley–Papanastasiou model was used to calculate the power for the different rheology. The numerical results suggest that the Simple Hybrid has the lowest power consumption and better performance.