Design and optimization of a novel ellipsoidal baffle mixer with high mixing efficiency and low pressure drop

BACKGROUND: Throughput, mixing efficiency and pressure drop are three key performance indicators of a mixer or reactor. However, it is difficult to simultaneously achieve high throughput, high mixing efficiency and low pressure drop in a traditional mixer. RESULTS: A novel mixer was designed and constructed by adding an ellipsoidal baffle to a large-scale Y-shaped mixer (YEBM) through computational fluid dynamics. The effects of ellipsoid period length, short and long axes, rotation direction, rotation angle and entrance angle of the mixer on mixing and flow characteristics were investigated and optimized. Compared with a 1 mm mixer, the throughput of the optimized YEBM is increased 100 times, the mixing efficiency is comparable and the pressure drop is reduced by 7.4%. Additionally, the application range of the YEBM with high mixing efficiency is extended to 499.1 < Re < 999.8. CONCLUSIONS: The results showed that the novel ellipsoidal baffle mixer could effectively enhance performance and reduce the pressure drop on the premise of ensuring high throughput. All the findings reported provide useful references for enhancement of mixing efficiency and reduction of pressure drop in a large-scale mixer.