A large number of industries including catalytic, chemical, cosmetic, food, and pharmaceutical industries frequently handle powders or granular materials in various unit operations. A cylindrical mixer mechanically agitated by an impeller blade is a common, industrially relevant geometry in numerous particle processing technologies. A bladed mixer has a capability of handling a wide variety of solid and liquid systems: free flowing and cohesive powders, pastes, or suspensions. The torque needed to move the impeller, provides insight into flow behavior of the material and can be monitored on the bench scale, pilot scale, and manufacturing scale so that it could provide useful information for scale-up and process monitoring & control. Experimental measurements of the agitation torque exerted on a particle bed and the power draw for the motor driving the impeller blades in a mixing process were conducted to investigate the impact of particle properties and blade geometry as a function of the blade rotation rate. It was found that the torque exerted on a granular bed and the power consumption were a strong function of the impeller blade configuration, the position of the blades in a deep granular bed, the fill height of the glass beads, and the size and friction coefficient of the particles. It was observed that the time-averaged torque and power consumption for different particle sizes qualitatively scaled with particle diameter. A scale-up relationship for a deep granular bed was developed: the time-averaged torque and average adjusted power consumption scaled with the square of the material fill height.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Impellers
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
Identifier
ETD_9305
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
electronic resource
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
1 online resource (57 pages : illustrations)
Note (type = degree)
M.S.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Note (type = statement of responsibility)
by Pavithra Valliappan
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
School of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore10001600001
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.