Aggregation and breakage of solid particles in suspensions agitated in a vibrating mixer: A non-fractal approach

Aggregation and breakage of solid particles or aggregates suspended in liquid can be found in numerous industrial processes. It is crucially important to predict the evolution of aggregates at any moment during the process. This aim can be achieved by modeling based on solid phase population balances. A lumped discrete population balance model has been selected for the verification of the experimental data. The experiments have been carried out in a laboratory-scale vibrating mixer equipped with a disc-type reciprocating impeller. A reasonably good agreement between the computational and experimental results of PSD data has been obtained. Dependencies between aggregation and breakage rate coefficients and the average energy dissipation rate in the mixer have been shown.