Using Industrial Chemical Mixing Equipment
90% of the industry uses steel vessels in industrial chemical mixing equipment. This is a very traditional chemical industry method, and the equipment is used in all fields. Fine chemical reactions, compounding, formulation, and fermentations are examples. We use steel vessels with jackets in 90% of the industry, and the main idea is that you have a big tank where you can fit some media and apply it with a motor. Different kinds of agitator geometries will generate different kinds of flow. They can be axial or radial. Radial flow is commonly known as generating a high shear rate. And the actual prong is causing some pumping. Not all agitators will be pure axial or pure radial; some will be a combination of the two, and in all of these torque ranges from pure shear rate to pure pumping, we have many different configurations of turbines, propellers, or these anchors, glass line equipment with some hydrofoils that will reduce the power while still providing enough shear, and so on. You have many options for selecting what you want, and you should be able to produce a very good result.
The other area of the fine chemical industry that is rapidly expanding is chemical flow or flow chemistry. This was well known in the oil industry, so we use continuous flow, CSTR, or PFR equipment in the oil industry so that inside the PFR or the plug flow reactor, we are running some reaction on the condition that we want, or the CSTR that this can continue to be the tank with agitator flowing continuously. What we can calculate is a very typical and old industry. The chemical industry developed their models in CSTR and PFR, and then they came to the bench to modify the chemical industry. But now, in recent years, we’ve been discussing flow chemistry.
algae research in laboratories, biotechnology science concept
So, in principle, we have a pipe through which we are flowing their materials and into which we are generating the conditions for it, primarily concentration and temperature, and the entire section is under the conditions of the reaction. So, we’re generating our process in a section of, let’s say, a few centimeters to meters of phase section flow. We’re discovering in the mixing equipment and flow chemistry that we can add some static mixers inside the pipe, which are geometrical devices that generate homogeneity in short plays.
So, instead of taking a few meters or centimeters to generate homogeneity, the techniques, after the end of the section, will generate homogeneity in a few centimeters or less. Let’s say we’re doing some intensity on the area where we need to generate homogeneity. Now, we need to apply the level of homogeneity to the chemical process we’re running to see if it’s good for the process. And for this, we at VisiMix are generating a new model we will release next year. We are now finishing the fifth step of these chemical kinetic reactions.
We will be able to provide what the process performance will be once we use static mixers with different geometries and what their concentration will be as a function of the position in the static mixer, as a function of the place, of the distance, and compared to the ideal conditions using the static mixture model of VisiMix. We have plugged the meaning of these evaluations and will show you how close you are to IDR, what equipment we will be using, and how close we are to the theoretical maximum performance we can generate. These will generate quickly, but this industry sector is still in its early stages. In a typical one, we have many VisiMix tools that I can show and solve. So, when we talk about using industrial chemical mixing equipment, you need models to solve it because it is very complex. Visimix is the best way to provide you with the resource that you’re looking for to better decide how to progress to the next step, how to progress to scale up, design, or transfer your process to the next step.
The Influence of Mixing in the Process
New methodology using VisiMix software for the purpose of checking the influence of mixing in the processes.
VisiMix Demo Operation
Learning how to input data into the VisiMix software and get results the will help us understand the influence of mixing in our processes.
Lab Experiments
Learning how to set up the relevant experiments at the lab scale, to develop the processes from an engineering point of view.