Study of fluid flow in baffled vessels stirred by a Rushton standard impeller

The paper deals with an investigation of velocity field in a tank stirred by a standard Rushton impeller located in the middle of the tank height. Time-resolved PIV method was used to measure the angle-resolved velocity field near the impeller blades in horizontal and vertical planes as well. Based on a simplified criterion λ2 < 0 the location, size and strength of trailing vortices behind the blades were determined. The measurements were carried out in two tanks of diameters T = 0.3 and 0.4 m and at mixing Reynolds numbers in a range 3.3-4.9 × 104. Simultaneously a detached eddy simulation (DES) was performed for the tank diameter T = 0.3 m and rotation speed 200 rpm (ReM = 3.3 × 104). The simulation results are compared with the experimental data.