The Design And Mixing Mechanisms Of Soft-Elastic Reactors Based On Bionics

The digestive systems of human and animals can be thought of as the miniature chemical plants,in which different kinds of precise unit operations take place.In recent years,biological reactors have been got more and more attention.The peristalsis of the digestive tract wall promotes the mixing,crushing,and transportation of the chyme.From the view of engineering,the digestive tract can be considered as the composition of multiple flexible bio-chemical reactors.The flexible system can handle chime with different rheological properties.Furthermore,inhomogeneous mixing,jam,scale formation,and corrosion which are often encountered in industry and difficult to solve hardly occur.Based on these advantages of the flexible system,inspired by the working mechanism of human and animal digestive systems,a soft-elastic reactor(SER)was developed to promote mixing through wall movements.The wall of SER,made of rubber,has a periodic movement driven by a crank-rod system.This paper introduced the construction and improvement of the SER system,and the production process of softelastic container in details.Mixing time and mixing structure were studied under different experimental conditions.Also,those factors which affected the efficiency of the SER were discussed under the current experimental conditions.Moreover,the traditional stirred tank reactor(STR)were compared with the SER under the same experimental conditions.Furthermore,the solution for the segregated region was proposed and implemented.The corrosion agar particles were also studied in SER and STR.The dimensional analysis method was used to study the experience formula which was suitable for the soft-elastic reactor.Based on previous experiences,the other forms of soft-elastic reactors were constructed.The results showed that the soft-elastic reactor through the wall movement could effectively promote the fluid mixing.Additionally,the mixing efficiency was controlled by frequency and max-penetration depths.The mixing time was also affected by the impact position,wall thickness and feed points.Through the combination of the softelastic reactor and the traditional impeller,the high viscosity fluid was mixing under the lower frequency and stirring speed and the segregated region was effectively eliminated.The agar particles were not easy to be damaged in SER compared with those in STR.Using the dimensional analysis method,some experience formulas which were suitable for the soft-elastic reactor had been got.Moreover,it was also found that the high viscosity fluid was mixing in the hermetically ellipsoidal soft-elastic reactor under the stretching and extrusion.