Stirring viscoelastic liquids

Values of kj a for viscoelastic liquids in aerated stirred tanks are substantially smaller than those in inelastic liquids. Moreover, less breakage of gas bubbles in the vicinity ofthe impeller occurs in viscoelastic liquids. The following dimensionless equation [8] (a modified form of Equation 7.37) can be used to correlate kj a in sparged stirred tanks for non-Newtonian (including viscoelastic) liquids ... 

The final main category of non-Newtonian behaviour is viscoelasticity. As the name implies, viscoelastic fluids exhibit a combination of ordinary liquid-like (viscous) and solid-like (elastic) behaviour. The most important viscoelastic fluids are molten polymers but other materials containing macromolecules or long flexible particles, such as fibre suspensions, are viscoelastic. An everyday example of purely viscous and viscoelastic behaviour can be seen with different types of soup. When a thin , watery soup is stirred in a bowl and the stirring then stopped, the soup continues to flow round the bowl and gradually comes to rest. This is an example of purely viscous behaviour. In contrast, with certain thick soups, on cessation of stirring the soup rapidly slows down and then recoils slightly. 

In non-Newtonian fluids K a also depends on their physical and rheoiogical properties. The contribution of the latter has been normally expressed in terms of the apparent viscosity, and there is general agreement that this dependence is of the form Kj a 0(11 ) % where z can take values between 0.4 to 0.7. In the case of viscoelastic materials, inclusion of the fluid rheology is less straightforward. Several authors have tried to include the effect of elasticity via the Deborah number, which for stirred tanks is defined as the product of a characteristic time of the fluid and impeller speed. However, determination of the former is not an easy task because it is not always possible to characterize experimentally the viscoelastic properties of the fluid. Determination of the characteristic time of the fluid from experimental shear viscosity vs. shear rate curves [29] and from interpolation of published experimental data on viscoelastic properties [30] has been tried in the past. However, values thus obtained are not necessarily representative of the actual behavior of the liquid. At present, inclusion of the Deborah number in dimensional or dimensionless correlations has not been completely successful. 

---