This work is an attempt to study the behaviour of fluid in the mixing vessel with a two-bladed or four-bladed impeller. The working fluid is complex, of a shear-thinning type and the Oswald model is used to describe the fluid viscosity. The study was accomplishedby numerically solving the governing equations of momentum and continuity. These equations were solved for the following range of conditions: 50–1000 for the Reynolds number, 0–0.15 for the baffle length ratio, and the number of impeller blades 2 and 4. The simulations were done for the steady state and laminar regime. The results show that the increase in baffle length (by increasing the ratio baffle length ratio) decreases the fluid velocity in the vessel. Increasing the speed of rotation of the impeller and/or increasing the number of blades improves the mixing process. Also, the length of the baffles does not affect the consumed power.

This paper is concerned with the rotational motion of the impeller and the thermal buoyancy within a mechanical mixer. The task was investigated numerically using the ANSYS-CFX simulator. The programmer is based on the finite volume method to solve the differential equations of fluid motion and heat transfer. The impeller has hot surfaces while the vessel has cold walls. The rotational movement of the impeller was controlled by the Reynolds number, while the intensity of the thermal buoyancy effect was controlled by the Richardson number. The equations were solved for a steady flow. After analyzing the results of this research, we were able to conclude that there is no effect of the values of Richardson number on the power number. Also, with the presence of the thermal buoyancy effect, the quality of the fluid mixing becomes more important. The increasing Richardson number increases the value of the Nusselt number of the impeller.