Reconstruction of 3-D Flow Field Inside Miniature Stirred Vessels Using a 2-D PIV Technique

The small size of high throughput experimentation (HTE) stirred vessel reactors precludes the use of normal 3-D PIV to visualize the whole flow field, as this requires the use of 2 PIV cameras for 3-D imaging around the vessel. This paper describes a method which uses a single camera to acquire detailed 2-D PIV measurements in many vertical and horizontal planes to reconstruct the time-averaged 3-D flow field inside a 45 mm diameter HTE vessel. Thus, the flow obtained using different agitation strategies—baffled, un-baffled and eccentric agitation—was examined in 2-D and 3-D in water. Velocity fields within the vessel were obtained which allowed estimation of the turbulent kinetic energy. The error associated with a 2-D approximation was negligible for the fully baffled vessel, but considerable for the un-baffled and eccentric configurations. Mixing times are also determined by PLIF, and the superiority of the eccentric configuration is demonstrated.