Numerical study of solid particle axial mixing in a fixed cylindrical drum with rotating paddles

Abstract

Axial mixture characterization is a wide spread problem in granular particle blending processes such as in an horizontal drum mixer. The homogeneous mixture of particles is obtained by blending the particles via rotating paddles in a fixed cylindrical drum. This problem, common to many technological devices, is crucial in the manufacture of a broad variety of industrial products, such as polypropylene. The granular flow behavior in these systems is still poorly understood and the numerical study of such configurations receives increasing academic and industrial attention. In this paper, a study is conducted to investigate the effects of different aspects of the reactor design on the axial transport of monodisperse, uniform density and spherical polypropylene particles. Results show that principally the shape of the paddles is the important design consideration to enhance the axial transport of particles.