AXIAL MIXING IN AN OPEN TURBINE ROTATING-DISK CONTACTOR FOR A SOLID LIQUID LIQUID-SYSTEM

The experimental study on axial mixing has been carried out in a newly developed solid-liquid-liquid contactor, the open turbine rotating disk contactor (OTRDC), using a quartz particles-tap water-kerosene system. The experimental data are treated by using the backflow model, and the correlation for estimating the backflow ratio of each phase have been obtained. It has been found that (1) the solid-phase axial mixing is mainly determined by the column geometries and rotor speed as well as the particle size distribution and (2) in comparison with the liquid-liquid system, the presence of solid particles results in larger continuous-phase but smaller dispersed-phase axial mixing.