A mechanistic model for pressure drops in corrugated plates static mixers

• We propose a mechanistic model for pressure drops in static mixers.
• The model includes distributed and concentrated pressure drop contributions.
• The model is tested against a number of literature and original pressure drop data.
• The influence of the mixer insert length on pressure drop is reliably estimated.

In this work original experimental data and a simplified model for the prediction of pressure drops in pipelines equipped with static mixers are presented. The experimental data clarify the effect of the element length and of the relative position between two consecutive elements on the pressure drop. A significant reduction of the pressure drop is obtained by shortening the element length, while the relative position between consecutive elements has a minor importance. The experimental data are discussed and adopted for testing the proposed model reliability under various physical and geometrical conditions. The results show that the model, which is also compared with the available literature correlations, can be confidently applied to standard static mixers as well as to unconventional static elements arrangement, since it reliably accounts for the pressure drop variations due to changes in the geometrical configuration. The analysis is focused on static mixers for turbulent flow in pipelines, in particular the corrugated plate mixers.