Three-Dimensional Numerical Simulation and Performance Study of an Industrial Helical Static Mixer

In many branches of processing industries, viscous liquids need to be homogenized in continuous operations. Consequently, fluid mixing plays a critical role in the success or failure of these processes. Static mixers have been utilized over a wide range of applications such as continuous mixing, blending, heat and mass transfer processes, chemical reactions, etc. This paper describes how static mixing processes of single-phase viscous liquids can be simulated numerically, presents the flow pattern through a helical static mixer, and provides useful information that can be extracted from the simulation results. The three-dimensional finite volume computational fluid dynamics code used here solves the Navier-Stokes equations for both laminar and turbulent flow cases. The turbulent flow cases were solved using $k-ω$ model and Reynolds stress model (RSM). The flow properties are calculated and the static mixer performance for different Reynolds numbers (from creeping flows to turbulent flows) is studied. A new parameter is introduced to measure the degree of mixing quantitatively. Furthermore, the results obtained by $k-ω$ and RSM turbulence models and various numerical details of each model are compared. The calculated pressure drop is in good agreement with existing experimental data.