CFD Analysis and Development of Mixing Tank Design for The Fermented Starch Production Process

Abstract

Stirred tanks are widely used in the industrial world, design and improvements are still being developed, including the stirred fermenter tank. A numerical study was carried out to examine the relationship between experimental and reference and computational analysis, in order to minimize the power consumption of a stirred fermenter tanks and optimize the velocity distribution and its profile in radial and axial direction. Specifically, velocity distribution profile in radial and axial direction and the profile of pressure distribution of an experimental impeller, a flat impeller, and a flat-hole impeller were investigated using Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) analysis. It was found that the axial velocity at the top and the bottom of the experimental impeller was highly disparate at around 0.95 m/s, while the flat impeller and the flat-hole impeller experienced a disparity of 0.05 m/s and 0.21 m/s, respectively. In case terms of decreased power, the experimental impeller showed power reduction of 21%, greater than that of the flat-hole impeller configuration of 17%.