Measurement of solid–liquid mixing quality by using a uniform design method based on image analysis

Abstract

Solid–liquid mixing has been a common industrial process operation. The measurement of solid–liquid mixing quality can help improve the efficiency of related industrial processes, but there is still a lack of an intuitive, accurate, and simple measurement method. As an important indicator to evaluate the solid–liquid mixing quality, the degree of solid suspension and the uniformity of solid distribution are directly related to mass transfer and reaction efficiency. Therefore, it is necessary to study the solid suspension and distribution in a solid–liquid system. In this work, the solid suspension and distribution of a solid–liquid system composed of glass beads–water stirred by the impeller are studied experimentally via digital image processing combined with statistical analysis. Specifically, images of solid–liquid mixing are first obtained using a camera and digitally processed. The area ratio of the solid in the image is proposed to reflect the degree of solid suspension, and the modified L2-star discrepancy (MD) is then used to quantify the uniformity of the solid distribution. Then, the solid–liquid mixing quality can be characterized by combining the area ratio and solid distribution. The feasibility of this method was proved by qualitative analysis of the solid–liquid mixing state and comparison with known studies. In addition, the effects of various stirring factors on the solid distribution were studied and discussed by using the proposed method. The results show that the method proposed in this paper can measure the quality of the solid–liquid mixing state more directly and is effective and accurate. Furthermore, it was used to find the best experimental parameters in this work. This method is also simpler and cheaper than many other methods. It is of great significance to improve the efficiency of chemical and metallurgical and other industrial processes.