Journal of Chemical Engineering of Japan, Vol. 37, No. 10, pp.

12151223, 2004 Research Paper

The Effect of Off-bottom Clearance on Macro Instabilities in a Stirred

Vessel
Nobuo MATSUDA 1, Yutaka TADA 2, Setsuro HIRAOKA2,
Shaoxiang QIAN3 and Hiroshi TAKEDA 3
1
Information Science and Technology,
Oshima National College of Maritime Technology,
1091-1, Komatsu, Oshimacho, Oshima-gun,
Yamaguchi 742-2193, Japan
2
Materials Science and Engineering,
Nagoya Institute of Technology, Gokisocho,
Showa-ku, Nagoya-shi, Aichi 466-8555, Japan
3
Rflow Co., Ltd., Takanashi Build., 10-45, Takasago 1,
Soka-shi, Saitama 340-0015, Japan

Keywords: Agitated Vessel, Flow, Long-time Fluctuation, Frequency Analysis, Macro Instabilities

The Effects of off-bottom clearance on Macro instabilities (low frequency fluctuations of flow) gener-
ated by a Rushton turbine in a fully baffled cylindrical flat-bottomed vessel was investigated by laser
Doppler velocimetry and a laser sheet flow visualization. The frequency of Macro instabilities depended
on off-bottom clearance C, that is, the volume between the impeller and the bottom or the surface. Two
frequencies of Macro instabilities above and below the impeller in the range of 0.3D C 0.8D showed
linear correlation to the off-bottom clearance C, where D is the vessel diameter. However, for C < 0.3D or
C > 0.8D, the frequencies did not follow the linear correlation to the off-bottom clearance C.

Introduction numerical simulation results of the large-scale and low

Mechanically stirred tanks are widely used in in-
dustry for a variety of mixing processes in order to
promote mixing, heat transfer and mass transfer. The
flow phenomena in a stirred vessel with full baffles is
one of the main subjects of experimental analyses and
numerical analyses and are studied from various points
of view, such as mean flow velocity, turbulence inten-
sity, turbulent kinetic energy and the rate of dissipa-
tion of turbulent kinetic energy. As the results of the
energetic research on the flow, much knowledge of the
mixing process has been obtained and efficient mix-
ing and blending equipments have been designed.
Winardi et al. (1988), Winardi and Nagase (1991),
Kresta and Wood (1993), Chapple and Kresta (1994)
and Montes et al. (1997) showed that there exist fluc-
tuation phenomena that are spatially on a large scale
and with low frequency in time.
We paid attention to the fluctuation phenomena
in a stirred vessel and have examined the characteris-
tics about the magnitude, the frequency and the dy-
namics in detail. We reported the experimental and the
Received on January 5, 2004. Correspondence concerning this
article should be addressed to Y. Tada (E-mail address:
tada.yutaka@nitech.ac.jp).
frequency phenomena (Matsuda et al., 1999a, 1999b,
2000, 2001) and also pointed out the importance of
the phenomena with power spectrum, fractal dimen-
sion analysis and chaos analysis in the torque time se-
ries of a stirred tank with a paddle impeller.
The large-scale and low frequency phenomena
have been studied by Bruha et al. (1993, 1994, 1995,
1996) and Montes et al. (1997) and were referred to as
Macro instabiliflIes (MI). Montes et al. (1997) showed
that the impeller revolution (Reynolds number) affected
MI. Roussinova et al. (2000) have reported the detailed
experimental results about MI. They measured the flow
velocity for four kinds of impellers (PBT, A310, HE3,
and RT) and three geometries (impeller diameter, the
number of baffles, off-bottom clearance) with laser
Doppler velocimetry (LDV) and have concluded from
the experimental analyses that the geometry affected
MI sensitively.
On the other hand, the change in the flow patterns
of a stirred vessel was studied from visual observa-
tions and LDV measurement by Kresta and Wood
(1993) and Chapple and Kresta (1994). They have
linked the stability of the flow with the geometrical
configuration and the turbulent intensity. We showed
MI differed significantly from type to type of the
impellers, a Rushton turbine, a paddle impeller and a
pitched blade turbine (Matsuda et al., 2000).

Copyright 2004 The Society of Chemical Engineers, Japan 1215

 Table 1 Experimental conditions
a [] b [m] Bw [m] C [m]
1.0 0.02 0.02 0.020.18
temperature of tap water: 25C
Fig. 1 Experimental apparatus for velocity measurement:
FLV probe, color separator box, laser gen-
erator, power unit, FLV driver, personal
computer (digital signal processor), stirred ves-
sel
The purpose of this paper is to obtain the cor-
relations between the off-bottom clearance and the
frequency of MI in a fully baffled cylindrical vessel
with a Rushton turbine. The local fluctuations of the
velocity field are measured for several geometric con-
figurations with LDV and the influence of the off-
bottom clearance on the frequency of MI is analyzed
by flow visualization.
1. Experimental
Figure 1 shows the experimental apparatus for
velocity measurement. The experiments were carried
out in a cylindrical acrylic resin vessel of diameter
D = 200 mm with a flat bottom and four baffles of
width Bw = D/10, equally spaced at the tank wall. The
tank was filled with the working fluid, tap water, to a
height equal to the diameter (D = H) and was sur-
rounded by an outer square acrylic resin tank filled with
the same working fluid in order to minimize the effect
of vessel curvature on the intersecting beams and thus
on the optical distortion. A discharge type impeller, a
Rushton turbine, was used, which was consisted of a
disk with six rectangular blades of width D/10 and
length D/12. The geometrical parameters and the
impeller speeds are shown in Table 1.
The flow velocities were measured by dual com-
ponent LDV with an argon-ion laser (Kanomax Japan,
Inc.) in a forward scatter mode and in a fringe mode
1216
D [m] d [m] N [s 1 ] Re []
0.20 0.1 1.667 18500
Fig. 2 Stirred vessel, impeller and the measurement loca-
tions (solid circles) in the case of off-bottom clear-
ance C = 0.5D. D, vessel diameter; d, impeller di-
ameter; b, impeller clearance; B w , baffle width;
H, liquid height
with double Bragg cells. The radial and/or axial com-
ponents of velocity were measured at various points in
the vessel. The measurement points were at three
vertical levels; the middle levels of the space above
and below the impeller and the impeller level (z = 0).
The measurement points (solid circles) in the case of
off-bottom clearance C = 0.5D were on lines la, lc (z =
0) and lb on a vertical plane that includes the impeller
axis as shown in Figure 2.
Due to the structure of the LDV equipment, the
flow velocity cannot be measured below the impeller
for C < 0.2D and above the impeller for C > 0.8D. The
axial and radial velocity signals were recorded for
about 15 min. In order to obtain almost continuous
Doppler signals, the rate of sampling data (the number
of data per second) was set to about 77 Hz. Thus, about
40,000 data were recorded for each experimental run.
The velocity was measured in a turbulent regime with
a mixing Reynolds number shown in Table 1.
The flow was visualized using the nylon particles
as a tracer with the equipment shown in Figure 3. The
specific gravity of the nylon particles was 1.02, the
particle size was 0.150.35 mm and the nylon parti-
cles follow the flow in the vessel well. As shown in
the figure, photographs of the locus of the dispersion
light from the nylon particles on the vertical plane of a
laser sheet were continuously taken for 18 seconds with
camera of iris 2.8 and shutter speed 1/4 s.
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING OF JAPAN
 Fig. 4 Time series of (a) radial velocity Vr and (b) axial velocity Vz (C = 0.5D, N = 1.67 s1)
Fig. 3 Visualization apparatus: laser sheet light, la-
ser generator, camera, stirred vessel
2. Data Analysis
2.1 Data processing and determination of the fre-
quencies of MI
Figure 4 shows typical time series of the radial
and the axial velocities near the Rushton turbine at
point on line l b (see Figure 2). The signal seems to
be so irregular that it is difficult to obtain directly any
information from the time series. Spectral analysis with
a fast Fourier transform is a useful way to examine the
overall characteristics of signal. An average of 16
power spectra obtained by Fourier transforming of the
velocity signal with 32,768 data is analyzed.
It is difficult, however, to determine all of the fre-
quencies related to the dynamics in the velocity field
from an averaged power spectrum in the domain of the
blade passage frequency to the domain related to trail-
ing vortex frequency or the Kolmogoroff wave number.
Thus, the frequencies of MI were determined with the
following method. First, the measured velocity time
series were processed with a moving average as a low
VOL. 37 NO. 10 2004
pass filter in order to remove high frequency noise.
The interception frequency of the filter was determined
such that the frequencies of MI and the blade passage
frequency would be pronounced. Next, the power spec-
trum was calculated from the filtered time series with
FFT.
2.2 Macro instabilities frequencies
MI are the phenomena of change in flow patterns
that are caused by the strong secondary flow gener-
ated in a stirred vessel. Since the secondary flow and
the change in a large-scale flow pattern are produced
in the whole vessel and affect each other, it is difficult
to distinguish the frequencies of MI by the change in
the flow patterns above and below the impeller.
In a vessel with a Rushton turbine, however, the
flows above and below the impeller seldom affect each
other. Thus, the effects of the off-bottom clearance on
the frequency of MI are investigated for a Rushton tur-
bine in this work. The frequency of MI produced above
the impeller is designated as fu1 and that below the
impeller is designated as fu2 in this paper. The frequen-
cies fu1 and fu2 are determined as follows.
(1) 16 power spectra of the flow velocity at each
measurement position (usually 9 to 13 points) are
calculated with FFT and are averaged.
(2) The frequencies of about 1/10 to 1/100 of the blade
passage frequency in the average of the power
spectra are to be those of MI.
For the off-bottom clearance where the effect of
MI strongly appears, the frequency for MI is easily
determined without using a low-pass filter. When the
effect of MI is weak, however, it is difficult to deter-
mine the frequency due to the noise and the frequency
produced by the nonlinear combination of the blade
passage and impeller revolution frequencies. Thus the
low-pass filter was applied in this work.
1217
Fig. 6 Average power spectra density of sixteen spectra computed with 215 points from axial and radial velocity time series
(C = 0.3D, N = 1.67 s 1, fCF = 2.8 Hz). (a) Vz, axial velocity; (b) Vr, radial velocity
Fig. 5 Average power spectrum density of sixteen spectra
calculated with 215 points from axial velocity time
series (C = 0.5D, N = 1.67 s1)
3. Results and Discussion
3.1 Time series analysis and power spectrum analy-
sis
The power spectra shown in Figure 5 are calcu-
lated with cut-off frequency f CF = 2.8 Hz as a low-pass
filter from the velocity time series in Figure 4(b). The
power spectrum at the cut-off frequency was decreased
by 3 dB, that is, 0.707 of the original one. The power
spectra for the higher frequencies than the cut-off fre-
quency were decreased by more than 3 dB due to the
low-pass filter. The value of the cut-off frequency fCF
was decided such that frequencies that are produced
by MI and a blade passage frequency are obtained
clearly. The power spectra contain three significant
frequency components: (1) random turbulent fluctua-
tions with frequencies higher than the blade passage
frequency, (2) the blade passage frequency (f p) corre-
sponding to the frequency of revolution of the impeller
or the turbine frequency (fc) corresponding to the fre-
1218
quency of revolution of the turbine and (3) a much
lower component (fu or fMI) of MI. The frequency of f u
in Figure 5 corresponds to fMI termed by Montes et al.
(1997).
Figures 6(a) and (b) are the power spectra of the
radial and the vertical velocities, respectively. Figure
6 shows two MI frequencies f u1 and f u2 appear when
C = 0.3D. Since the flow in a vessel is three dimen-
sional, some fluctuations are pronounced in the axial
velocity and the others are in the radial velocity, that
is, f u1 appears strongly in the axial velocity and fu2 ap-
pears clearly in the radial flow in Figure 6. The result
that fu1 strongly appeared in the axial velocity corre-
sponds to a dynamic vertically change in the vortex in
the larger volume space of the vessels upper part. Al-
though the power spectra near 2.1 and 4.2 Hz are de-
pressed due to the moving average used as the low-
pass filter in Figures 5 and 6, they do not affect the
characteristic frequencies f u1 and fu2, which are in the
frequency region of 0.01 to 0.1 Hz.
Figure 7 shows the frequencies and the magni-
tude of the radial and the axial velocities, when the
off-bottom clearance C is in 0.2D to 0.7D. In Figure 7,
MI is designated as high when the peak of MI is
strong and easily detected in the power spectra for the
off-bottom clearance C = 0.5D as shown in Figure 5.
When the peak is weak and detected with carefulness
for C 0.3D as shown in Figure 6, MI is designated as
low, and when MI is not strong nor weak, it is mid-
dle. As stated in Section 1, the velocity cannot be
measured below and above the impeller for C < 0.2D
and C > 0.8D, respectively. From the flow visualiza-
tion in the later Section 3.3, when C < 0.2D and C >
0.8D, MI is not caused by the fluctuation of the vortex
center position and the change in the size of an unsta-
ble primary flow but is caused by the appearance and
the disappearance of vortex. When C = 0.1D and C =
0.9D, the appearance and disappearance were not ob-
served in the smaller volume, that is, the volume be-
low the impeller for C = 0.1D and that above the
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING OF JAPAN
Fig. 7 Profiles of macro-instability frequency for N = 1.67 s 1. (a) C = 0.2D, fu1 = 0.24 Hz and fu2 = 0.73 Hz, (b) C = 0.3D,
fu1 = 0.22 Hz and fu2 = 0.78 Hz, (c) C = 0.4D, fu1 = 0.37 Hz and fu2 = 0.58 Hz, (d) C = 0.5D and fu = 0.42 Hz, (e) C =
0.6D, fu1 = 0.57 Hz and fu2 = 0.37 Hz, (f) C = 0.7D, fu1 = 0.68 Hz and fu2 = 0.21 Hz

impeller for C = 0.9D. Thus MI frequencies of these tion, that is, the Reynolds number in this work is con-
cases are not shown in Figure 7. stant. Two frequencies f u1 and f u2 of MI are observed
The figure shows that the frequency change with when C 0.5D and are merged to f u when C = 0.5D.
the off-bottom clearance, though the impeller revolu- When C = 0.4D (Figure 7 (c)), f u1 = 0.37 Hz is lower

VOL. 37 NO. 10 2004 1219

Fig. 9 Photographs of the flow in the stirred vessel. (a) C = 0.5D, N = 1.67 s1, (b) C = 0.3D, N = 1.67 s1;
flows; , secondary flow
Fig. 8 Correlation between frequencies (f u1 and f u2 ) of
macro instabilities and off bottom clearance C for
a Rushton turbine.
than fu2 = 0.58 Hz. When C = 0.6D (Figure 7(d)), f u1 =
0.57 Hz and fu2 = 0.37 Hz. It means that higher fre-
quency MI arises in the smaller volume space in a
Rushton turbine. When C = 0.5D (Figure 7(d)), the
volumes above and below the impeller are equal to each
other and fu = fu1 = f u2 = 0.42 Hz is observed.
3.2 Correlation between frequencies of MI and off-
bottom clearance
The effects of the off-bottom clearance C on the
frequencies fu1 and f u2 of MI are shown in Figure 8,
where the frequency f u1 increases and the frequency fu2
decreases with the increase in the off-bottom clearance.
It means that MI is influenced by the off-bottom clear-
ance, that is, the volume of the space above or below
the impeller.
When 0.3D C 0.8D for a Rushton turbine, the
frequencies of MI are correlated by the following equa-
1220
and , primary
tions,
fu1 = 0.98C 0.07 (1)
fu2 = 1.14C + 0.99 (2)
When C = 0.2D, the frequency of MI deviates from
the correlations, Eqs. (1) and (2).
The reason for the appearance of the characteris-
tic frequencies of MI is considered as follows. Various
size vortexes are generated by nonlinear interactions
in a turbulent flow. Smaller vortexes receive energy
from larger vortexes due to the extension and distor-
tion, which is an energy transfer mechanism from larger
vortexes to smaller vortexes. Since vortexes are not
generated in infinite space but in finite one, the vol-
ume of the mixing tank under the geometric and oper-
ating conditions, some vortexes of some scale may exist
for a long time and some vortexes of another scale may
not. This is probably the reason why the characteristic
frequencies of MI arise.
3.3 Visualization
Figures 9(a) and (b) show typical flows for C =
0.5D and 0.3D in the stirred vessel, respectively. In
this work the impeller rotates clockwise when we see
from the top. In the left side of Figure 9(a), the radial
flow from the turbine reaches the wall, collides with
the buffer and makes two primary circulation flows (
in Figures 9(a) and (b)), which go up to the surface or
down to the bottom. In Figure 9(b), after a primary
circulation flow ( in Figure 9(b)) grow up to a verti-
cal long ellipse flow above the impeller, a small sec-
ondary circulation flow ( in Figure 9(b)), which has
the opposite rotation to the primary circulation, is gen-
erated near the impeller tip in the upper primary circu-
lation and a secondary circulation flow ( in Figure
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING OF JAPAN
Fig. 10 Flow patterns in the stirred vessel with a Rushton turbine impeller (C = 0.5D, N = 1.67 s 1): 1 and 2, primary flows;
3, circulation flow near the impeller tip; 4 and 5, primary flows; 6 and 7, cross path flows
9(b)) with a smaller horizontally long ellipse becomes
stronger below the impeller. These circulation flows
were very unstable and the center of the primary flow
went up and down. Figures 10 and 11 are examples of
a sequence of photographs for C = 0.5D and C = 0.3D,
respectively. From the characteristics of the flow pat-
tern, the frequency of MI was calculated.
Two vortices of large scale above and below the
impeller were observed at t = 0.5 s (1 and 2 in Figure
10), a small secondary circulation flow which had the
opposite rotation to the primary circulation near the
impeller (3 in Figure 10) was generated at t = 1.5 s and
two vortices of large scale were observed at t = 2.5 s
(4 and 5 in Figure 10). Furthermore, at t = 0 s and
2.0 s strong flows across the shaft moved the vortex
up above the impeller and stretched the vortex (6 and
7 in Figure 10). From the analysis of the visualization,
it turns out that the frequency of changing the flow
pattern in a vessel is close to the frequency of MI.
In Figure 11 the off-bottom clearance C = 0.3D,
the volumes above and below the impeller are differ-
ent from each other and the vortices have different
periods of cycle. The figure shows that the vortex be-
VOL. 37 NO. 10 2004
low the impeller (8 in Figure 11) has the cycle period
shorter than that of the vortex above the impeller due
to the space volume difference. At t = 0 s, a big long
vortex can be seen (9 in Figure 11). Although it is un-
clear from the photograph, a new small vortex in the
big vortex is generated about 2 cm above from the
impeller tip at t = 0.5 s (10 in Figure 11). The new
vortex gradually changes to a big long one at t = 3.0 s
(11 in Figure 11). The frequency of such a change in a
big long vortex was about 0.25 Hz from the analysis
of long visualization. When the off-bottom clearance
C = 0.3D, the speed of movement of the vortex center
and the development of size above the impeller dif-
fered from those below the impeller with the analysis
of visualization.
The detail analysis about the effects of the impeller
type on MI will be discussed in another paper in the
near future.
Conclusion
The effects of off-bottom clearance on MI gener-
ated by a Rushton turbine in a fully baffled cylindrical
1221
Fig. 11 Flow patterns in the stirred vessel with a Rushton turbine impeller (C = 0.3D, N = 1.67 s1): 8, vortex below impeller;
9, big longwise vortex; 10 and 11, newly produced vortexes near impeller

flat-bottomed vessel with laser Doppler velocimetry f CF = cut-off frequency [s1]

and a laser sheet flow visualization was investigated fc = impeller revolution frequency [s1]
f MI = frequency of macro instabilities [s1]
and followings are obtained. fp = blade passage frequency [s1]
(1) The frequencies of MI depend on the off-bottom f u, fu1, fu2 = frequencies of macro instabilities [s1]
clearance, that is, the volume above or below the H = liquid height in the tank [m]
impeller in the vessel. N = impeller rotation speed [s1]
(2) Two frequencies of MI exist; one arises above and nb = number of impeller blades []
Re = Reynolds number []
the other does below the impeller. The frequency for r = radial co-ordinate [m]
the smaller volume space is stronger and higher than Vr = radial velocity [m/s]
that for the larger volume space. When the off-bottom Vz = vertical velocity [m/s]
clearance C = 0.5D, the two frequencies merge into z = axial co-ordinate [m]
one.
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