Haruki Furukawa

Correlation of Power Consumption for Several Kinds of Mixing Impellers

The authors reviewed the correlations of power consumption in unbaffled and baffled agitated vessels with several kinds of impellers, which were developed in a wide range of Reynolds numbers from laminar to turbulent flow regions. The power correlations were based on Kamei and Hiraokas expressions for paddle and pitched paddle impellers. The calculated correlation values agreed well with experimental ones, and the correlations will be developed the other types of impellers.

Development of a Mixing Process Using an HB-Type Impeller to Easily Achieve Scale-Up by Maintaining Geometrical Similarity

In recent years, a novel home base-type (HB-type) impeller was developed to be based on observation of the streak line pattern. An HB impeller must be simple, speedy, and stable (3S). When an HB impeller is used on the laboratory beaker scale, the mixing performance of the HB impeller is better than that of a normal cylindrical stirring bar. In addition, an industrial-scale HB impeller has been constructed based on the observation of the streak line and isolated mixing regions in the vessel. The present authors believe that scale-up of the mixing process is very easy because the geometrical shape of the impeller can be kept consistent when scaling up from the laboratory scale to the industrial scale.