Principles of mixing in the fatty oil industries

Conclusion The principles of mixing are now so well understood that it is possible to determine the fluid motion best suited for any specific process. Equipment can be selected that will give the desired motion most economically. In some processes pipeline mixing is sufficient and convenient. Most operations require intermixing of materials on both large and small scales and can be done best with propellers and turbines operating in tanks. At all stages of the development of a new process, exploratory-research, bench-scale, and pilot-plant, attention to the mixing impeller and tank arrangement is necessary so that equivalent results can be reproduced in commercial sizes. When scale models of propellers and turbines are used, with well-known flow, turbulence, and power characteristics, the mixers can be selected with assurance. Otherwise the sizing of large-scale equipment becomes mainly conjecture and improvisation.