Continuous Time Domain Characterization of Mixing in Agitated Pulp Chests

Abstract

Although mixing is widely used in the chemical process industry, it is difficult to characterize. Mixing is even more difficult to characterize in pulp and paper manufacturing, which involves non-Newtonian pulp suspensions and non-ideal flows. In the past, researchers have characterized mixing in the discrete-time domain with model simplifications. In our study, we used the continuous time domain to determine the mixing parameters for laboratory-scale agitated pulp chests. We used a robust hybrid algorithm incorporating genetic operations and gradient search in conjunction with the differential-algebraic mixing model.