Republic of the Philippines

BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY

Gov. Pablo Borbon Campus II, Alangilan Batangas City, Philippines 4200
College of Engineering, Architecture & Fine Arts
www.batstate-u.edu.ph Tel. No. (043) 425-0139 loc. 118

Chemical and Food Engineering Department

BLENDING
AND
MIXING

ChE-4101

Arellano, Oliver E.

Bantugon, Michelle Kae Celine Jo-Anne E.

Fabregar, Noel Christian M.

Gandola, Mark Louell V.

 Llaga, Roed Alejandro G.
Pasia, Kristhel Joy A.

November 2016

BLENDING AND MIXING

According to Sadalkar (2014), the terms "mixing" and "blending" are often used
interchangeably, but technically they are slightly different. Blending is a process of
combining materials, but blending is a relatively gentle process compared to mixing. In
terms of the phase of material, blending is the process of solid-solid mixing or mixing of
bulk solids with small quantity of liquid. Whereas, the terminology mixing is more closely
associated with liquid-liquid, gas-liquid, and viscous materials.
MIXING (Industrial Applications)
Mixing is a unit operation that involves manipulation of a heterogeneous physical
system with the intent to make it more homogeneous. Mixing is performed to allow heat
and/or mass transfer to occur between one or more streams, components or phases.
Modern industrial processing almost always involves some form of mixing. Some
classes of chemical reactors are also mixers. With the right equipment, it is possible to
mix a solid, liquid or gas into another solid, liquid or gas It is a much more difficult
operation to study and describe than agitation. The patterns of flow of fluid velocity in an
agitated vessel are complex but reasonably definite and reproducible. The power
consumption is readily measured. The results of mixing studies, on the other hand, are
seldom highly reproducible and depend in large measure on how mixing is defined by
the particular experimenter.
MIXING CLASSIFICATIONS
1. Liquidliquid mixing
Single-phase blending - tends to involve low-shear, high-flow mixers to
cause liquid engulfment
2. Gasgas mixing - process of mixing gases for a specific purpose where the
composition of the resulting mixture is specified and controlled
3. Solidsolid mixing
4. Liquidsolid mixing - typically done to suspend coarse free-flowing solids, or to
break up lumps of fine agglomerated solids
Solid suspension - done to improve the rate of mass transfer between the
solid and the liquid
Solid deagglomeration - similar to the blending of immiscible liquids,
except for the fact that coalescence is usually not a problem
5. Liquidgas mixing - typically mixed with mass transfer to occur
 6. Gassolid mixing - may be conducted to transport powders or small particulate
solids from one place to another, or to mix gaseous reactants with solid catalyst
particles
7. Multiphase mixing - requires the use of high-shear, low-flow mixers to create
droplets of one liquid in laminar, turbulent or transitional flow regimes, depending
on the Reynolds number of the flow
BLENDING OF MISCIBLE LIQUIDS
Miscible Liquids are blended in relatively small process vessels by propellers or turbine
impellers, usually centrally mounted, and in a large storage and waste treatment tanks
by side-entering propellers or jet mixers.

BLENDING IN PROCESS VESSELS

The impeller in a process vessel produces a high-velocity stream and the liquid is well
mixed in the region close to the impeller because of the intense turbulence. As the
stream slows down while entraining other liquid and flowing along the wall, there is
some radial mixing in the direction of flow.

As shown in Figure 9.15, The mixing time using baffled turbines varies with about the
-1.5 power of the stirrer speed in this region and then increases more steeply as the
Reynolds number is reduced still further. The data in Fig 9.15 are for certain ratios of
impeller size to tank size.
In pseudoplastic liquid, blending times at Reynolds numbers below about 1000 much
longer than in Newtonian liquids under the same impeller conditions. In the regions of
low shear, far from the impellers, the apparent viscosity of the pseudo plastic liquid is
greater than it is near the impeller. At high Reynolds numbers, there is a little difference
in the mixing characteristics of Newtonian and pseudo plastic liquids.

STRATIFIED BLENDING IN STORAGE TANKS

For effective blending in a large tank in a side-entering propeller must be oriented
precisely with regard to both its angle with the horizontal (for top-to-bottom
circulation) and, in the horizontal plane, the angle it makes with the tangent to the
tank wall at the point of entry.
The time required for stratified blending depends on the circulation rate but more
importantly on the rate of erosion of the interface between the stratified liquid
layers.
No general correlations are available for stratified blending.

JET MIXERS
Jets are set in clusters at several locations in the tank. The velocity in the jet
issuing from the nozzle is uniform and constant.
Core- area of which decreases with distance from the nozzle. by an expanding
turbulent jet, in which the radial velocity decreases with distance from the
centerline of the jet.
Entrainment- Fluid flows into the jet and is absorbed, accelerated, and blended
into the augmented jet.
An equation applying over distances larger than 4.3Dj is

MOTIONLESS MIXERS
More difficult mixing tasks are accomplished by motionless mixers, commercial
devices in which stationary elements successively divide and recombine portions of the
fluid stream.

In Fig. 9.18 each short helical element divides the stream in two, gives it a 180
degree twist, and delivers it to the succeeding element, which is set at 90
degrees to the trailing edge of the first element. The second element divides the
already divided stream and twists it 180 degrees in the opposite direction. For the
n elements, there are 2 divisions and recombination, or over 1 million in a 20-
element mixer.
 MIXER SELECTION
There is not necessarily any direct relation between power consumed and
amount or degree of mixing. Little of the energy supplied is used for
mixing. If baffles is added, mixing become rapid; a larger fraction of
energy is used for mixing and relatively less for circulation.
The best mixer is the one that mixes in the required time with the smallest
amount of power.
For mixing reagents in the feed tank or blending product from different
batches in the storage tank, a relatively small size mixer might be used,
even if several minutes are required for complete mixing.

Other Industrial equipment for mixing

Close-clearance mixers -used in the laminar regime, because the
viscosity of the fluid overwhelms the inertial forces of the flow and
prevents the fluid leaving the impeller from entraining the fluid next to it
1. Anchor mixers - induce solid-body rotation and do not promote
vertical mixing
2. Helical mixers- typically rotated to push material at the wall
downwards, which helps circulate the fluid and refresh the surface
at the wall
High shear dispersers - create intense shear near the impeller but
relatively little flow in the bulk of the vessel
Static mixers - used when a mixing tank would be too large, too slow, or
too expensive to use in a given process
Liquid whistles - a kind of static mixer that pass fluid at high pressure
through an orifice and subsequently over a blade

REFERENCES
McCabe, W. L., Smith, J. C., & Harriott, P. (1993). Unit operations of chemical
engineering (5th ed.). New York; London: McGraw-Hill.
Ullmann, Fritz (2005). Ullmann's Chemical Engineering and Plant Design,
Volumes 12. John Wiley & Sons.
http://app.knovel.com/hotlink/toc/id:kpUCEPDV02/ullmanns-chemical-engineering
http://www.bakker.org/cfm/webdoc13.htm
http://www.powderprocess.net/Mixing.html
http://www.bakker.org/cfm/webdoc4.htm
http://www.bakker.org/cfm/webdoc10.htm
http://www.hockmeyer.com/technical/publications/73-dispersion-tips-help.html