Stirring and Mixing Devices

Laboratory equipment may include refrigerators, centrifuges, microscopes, glassware, vacuum systems, stirring and mixing devices, heating devices, and autoclaves. Laboratory workers should... 

Between 1 s and 1 min specific contact time, conduction heat-transfer performance decreases theoretically as the 0.29 power of contact time. This is consistent with empirical data from several forms of indirect-heat dryers which show performance variation as the 0.4 power of rotational speed (21). In agitator-stirred and rotating indirect-heat dryers, specific contact time can be related to rotational speed provided that speed does not affect the physical properties of the material. To describe the mixing efficiency of various devices, the concept of a mixing parameter is employed. An ideal mixer has a parameter of 1. 

A number of innovative polymerization reactors using loop reactors, plug-flow and static mixer reactors, and continuous stirred-tank reactors have been reported. For example, Wilkinson and Geddes (15) describe a 50-liter reactor that has the same capacity as a 5000-gallon batch reactor. Extruders, thin-film evaporators, and other devices designed to provide intense mixing for viscous or unstable materials have also been used as reactors. 

A micromixer in which the fluid can be stirred by periodically pumping through the side channels is shown in Figure 3.45 [481]. The periodic perturbation applied via the side channel allows liquids A and B to be mixed. Other mixers based on oscillating pressure-pumped flow have also been reported [482,483]. Two droplets (600 pL) were merged and mixed by a push-pull (shuttling) method in a PDMS device consisting of a hydrophobic microcapillary vent (HMCV) [364]. 

The equations that have been developed for design using these pseudo constants are based on steady-state mass balances of the biomass and the waste components around both the reactor of the system and the device used to separate and recycle microorganisms. Thus, the equations that can be derived will be dependent upon the characteristics of the reactor and the separator. It is impossible here to present equations for all the different types of systems. As an illustration, the equations for a common system (a complete mix - stirred tank reactor with recycle) are presented below. 

Homogenize and wet the adsorbent intensively. For small slurry volumes and stable adsorbents this might be done by ultrasonification for 5 min. For larger slurry volumes this might be carried out in a mixing device or the suspension has to be stirred for at least 15 min with a paddle stirrer. 

If the liquid component predominates in the mixture of substances to be mixed, the mixing operation is named stirring and a stirrer (an impeller) is used as the mixing device. The following five stirring operations can be distinguished [611] ... 

Any calorimeter with a suitable mixing device and designed for use with liquids can be applied to determine heats of solution, dilution, or mixing. To obtain good precision in the determination of heats of solution requires careful attention to detail in the construction of the calorimeter. The dissolution of a solid can sometimes be a relatively slow process and requires efficient and uniform stirring. Substantial experimental precautions are ordinarily made to ensure that heat input from the stirrer mechanism is minimized. 

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