The tubular reactor is an efficient continuous reactor suitable for large-scale green production. However, the design of the internal components should be matched to the properties of the fluid. In this study, a novel rotary-shear-enhanced blade (RSEB) mixing element is constructed to intensify the mixing efficiency for shear-thinning non-Newtonian fluids in a tubular reactor. First, the apparent viscosity of the carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) solution is measured using a rheometer, and a constitutive equation based on the Carreau model is obtained. Then, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are performed to investigate the fluid flow behavior. The results suggest that the constructed CFD model demonstrates a satisfactory degree of accuracy. Moreover, the mixing efficiency is analyzed quantitatively using the distributive mixing performance, the dispersive mixing performance, and the flow resistance. The results indicate that the designed RSEB model attained a favorable equilibrium between its mixing performance and energy consumption. Furthermore, an examination of the impact of rotation angle reveals that 30° is the optimal parameter under the investigated operating conditions. This study can provide insights for the design and optimization of high-performance tubular industry reactors.
Zheng et al. (Wed,) studied this question.