Gas-Liquid Mixing in a Grid-Disc Impeller Stirred Tank

To enhance the gas-liquid mixing performance in stirred tanks, the grid-disc impeller was designed by replacing the solid disc of the standard Rushton impeller with a grid disc. Gas-liquid hydrodynamics of the new impeller was studied by employing the Eulerian-Eulerian two-phase model coupled with the dispersed k-ε turbulence model. Rotation of the impeller was simulated with the multiple reference frame method. Flow field, gas holdup, and power consumption were investigated and compared with the standard Rushton impeller. The numerical method was validated by comparing the gas holdup with literature. The grid-disc impeller performed better than the Rushton impeller in terms of gas dispersion performance, axial pumping capacity, and energy requirement, indicating its potential for gas-liquid mixing applications.