Power consumption in mechanically agitated contactors using pitched bladed turbine impellers

Abstract

Power consumption was measured in mechanically agitated contactors of internal diameter 0.3m, 0.57m, 1.0m and 1.5m. Tap water was used as a liquid in all the experiments. The impeller speed was varied in the range of 0.3-13.33 r/s. Three types of impellers, namely disc turbine (DT), pitched-blade downflow turbine (PTD) and pitched blade upflow turbine (PTU) were employed. The ratio of the impeller diameter to vessel diameter (D/T) and the ratio of impeller blade width to impeller diameter (W/D) were varied over a wide range. The effects of impeller clearance from the tank bottom (C), blade angle ( φ ), total liquid height (H/T), number of impeller blades (n_b) and blade thickness (t_b) were studied in detail. Power consumption was measured using a torque table. Power number was found to have a strong dependence on the flow pattern generated by the impeller. Unlike, DT and PTU, the power number of PTD was found to increase with a decrease in clearance. The PTD (T/3) was found to have the lowest power number in all the vessels and the power number increased with either a decrease or an increase in the impeller diameter from T/3. The dependence of power number on impeller diameter was found to be more prominent when the D/T ratio was more than 0.3. In general, the power number was found to increase with an increase in blade angle and blade width. The effect of blade width was found to be more prominent in larger diameter vessels. A correlation has been developed for power number in the case of PTD impellers.