Positron Emission Particle Tracking for Liquid-Solid Mixing in Stirred Tanks

Abstract

Mixing in stirred tanks is vital to a wide range of industrial processes, typically requiring solids to be fully suspended and evenly distributed. The quality of suspension and mixing is typically measured visually. Such measurements are thus subject to human interpretation and can only feasibly be conducted in transparent systems – an uncommon condition in industrial systems. Visual measurements of homogeneity must also infer full 3D distributions of particles solely from the observation of a limited section thereof. This work details methods by which a system's homogeneity and state of suspension may be measured and quantified with no human interpretation, which can extract information from opaque systems and consider full 3D data acquired throughout the interior of a given system.