Validation of the hydrodynamics in a turbulent un-baffled vortex reactor at two different stirring Reynolds numbers

Abstract In this paper, a turbulent flow is simulated in an un-baffled stirred tank reactor with vortex effect by means of large eddy simulations. This work aims at validating the influence of increasing the stirring frequency on the hydrodynamics and compares the mixing regions that form in such configurations due to the presence of two main vortex types. The open source TRUST-TrioCFD code is used with a discontinuous front-tracking algorithm to capture the vortex that develops at the free surface. A rotating magnetic stirrer is modelled by an immersed boundary method with a penalization concept. Analysis of the auto-correlation function shows a different range of time micro-scales which depends on the spatial location and stirring frequency. A very good agreement is reported between the numerical solution and the experimental measurements and thus reflects the good quality of our numerical study. As far as no similar detailed work is reported in the literature, the numerical data is considered as a reference and will serve in a next step in modelling the formation of solid particles due to a precipitation process that takes place in many applications of energy and chemistry.