Investigation of mixing viscoplastic fluid with a modified anchor impeller inside a cylindrical stirred vessel using Casson–Papanastasiou model

In process engineering as chemical and biotechnological industry, agitated vessels are commonly used for various applications; mechanical agitation and mixing are performed to enhance heat transfer and improve specific Physico-chemical characteristics inside a heated tank. The research subject of this work is a numerical investigation of the thermo-hydrodynamic behavior of viscoplastic fluid (Casson-Papanastasiou model) in a stirred tank, with introducing a new anchor impeller design by conducting some modifications to the standard anchor impeller shape. Four geometry cases have been presented for achieving the mixing process inside the stirred vessel, CAI; classical anchor impeller, AI1; anchor impeller with added horizontal arm blade, AI2 and AI3 anchor impeller with two and three added arm blades, respectively. The investigation is focused on the effect of inertia and plasticity on the thermo-hydrodynamic behavior (flow pattern, power consumption, and heat transfer) by varying the Reynolds number (Re = 1, 10, 100, 200), Bingham number (Bn = 1, 10, 50), in addition to the effect of geometry design in the overall stirred system parameters. The findings revealed an excellent enhancement of flow pattern and heat transfer in the stirred system relatively to the increase of inertia values. Also, an energy reduction has been remarked and the effect of anchor impeller shape. AI3 geometry design significantly improves the flow pattern and enhances heat transfer by an increased rate of 10.46% over the other cases.