On the performance of static mixers: A quantitative comparison

The performance of industrially relevant static mixers that work via chaotic advection in the Stokes regime for highly viscous fluids, flowing at low Reynolds numbers, like the Kenics, the Ross Low-Pressure Drop (LPD) and Low-Low-Pressure Drop (LLPD), the standard Sulzer SMX, and the recently developed new design series of the SMX, denoted as SMX(n) (n, N_p, N_x) = (n, 2n − 1, 3n), is compared using as criteria both energy consumption, measured in terms of the dimensionless pressure drop, and compactness, measured as the dimensionless length. Results are generally according to expectations: open mixers are most energy efficient, giving the lowest pressure drop, but this goes at the cost of length, while the most compact mixers require large pressure gradients to drive the flow. In compactness, the new series SMX(n), like the SMX(n = 3) (3, 5, 9) design, outperform all other devices with at least a factor 2. An interesting result is that in terms of energy efficiency the simple SMX (1, 1, 4, θ = 135°) outperforms the Kenics RL 180°, which was the standard in low pressure drop mixing, and gives results identical to the optimized Kenics RL 140°. This makes the versatile “X”-designs, based on crossing bars, superior in all respects.