How does a static mixer work?

Try pouring salad oil over water and see what happens. Two layers form, and the oil floats on the water. Try blowing air into a liquid. What happens? Bubbles appear in the liquid but also disappear quickly. In thicker oils, this happens more slowly than in water. Oil, water, or natural gas do not mix. These home, garden, and kitchen phenomena are based on physics, and the industry faces this problem. Static mixers provide an excellent solution.

Forced to flow and mix

Static mixers consist of a tube element generally containing molded parts. These so-called mixing elements ensure that the flow profile is disturbed so that all substances are mixed into a homogeneous mixture. In one process, external components, such as pumps, provide forced feed to the mixer. There are no moving parts in a static mixer, which has many advantages.

As a result, static mixers do not require any maintenance, consume very little energy, and have no electrical components that could lead to a potentially explosive atmosphere. Determining the implementation and quantity of formed parts requires extensive knowledge and sophisticated computational models and software packages to determine the correct mix. In general, when mixing, two mixing principles are applied from flow theory, i.e., mixing occurs from the laminar or turbulent flow.

Examples of industrial applications

A case in point is the measurement of the production of oil sources, not only crude oil flowing from such sources but also contaminants such as (brine) water and sometimes gases. The flow of these three components in the delivery pipe is very uneven; the gas will separate quickly and be at the top of the pipe, while the liquid will flow through the bottom of the pipe.

A representative sample must be drawn from the pipeline to measure the composition. However, how do we get a homogeneous mixture from this pipeline? This can be achieved by placing a static mixer directly in front of the sampling point, where the mixer uniformly mixes the oil, water, and gas. Therefore, obtaining a representative or homogeneous sample just after the static mixer is a piece of cake. Ultimately, after sampling, the oil, water, and gas will be separated again in the pipeline. Static mixers provide an efficient solution