Numerical Simulation Of Horizontal Agitated Tank With The Function Of Self-cleaning

High viscosity materials with poor liquidity and uneven RTD are quite common inchemical processes. In the agitating process, heating operation always causes the localoverheating which might further lead to carbonization. The purpose of this paper is todesign a kind of horizontal agitated tank with self-cleaning structures. This tank isvery suitable to deal with high viscosity materials.Based on Fluent, a type of CFD commercial software, the numerical simulation andagitation performances of this agitated tank were investigated. In the simulationprocess,RNGk εturbulence model and moving mesh model were firstly applied.The characteristics of flow field, power consumed and residence time distributionin stirred tank were also studied. There is no obvious blind angle and the clean-upwings work well in the tank. The change of viscosity of material has a great impact onthe power consumed. When the viscosity of material is more than3Pa.s, therelationship between power consumed and viscosity of the material is a linear. Butwhen the viscosity of material is lower than3Pa.s, no positive correlation wasobserved. The power curve gained has a similar tendency to the results in theliterature. The variance of RTD curves increased and the back-mixing become moresevere with the increase of spiralangle. But the variance increases and theback-mixing gets severely with the reduce of stirring shaft speed. When using thistank to deal with low viscosity, it will have low velocity flow area in the middle ofthis tank. And the variance of RTD cure obviously shows that the back-mixing issevere. And multi peaks presented in the cure showed that there is circular-flow in thetank.The theory evidences can be provided based on the research achievement for thedesign of horizontal agitated tank with the function of self-cleaning and the researchresults can be also used to control the mixing process.