Effects of increased viscosity on micromixing in rotor–stator spinning disk reactors

In this paper, micromixing is investigated in two Spinning Disk Reactors for liquids with increased viscosity. Glycerol and CMC were used as viscosity modifiers and micromixing characterization was performed by means of the Villermaux–Dushman method. For the first time, the effects of increasing the pH of the bulk solution leading to the disproportionation reaction of iodine are successfully modeled. A kinetic model is proposed to account for the presence of glycerol as a co-solvent. Micromixing efficiency decreases with increasing viscosity, yet the results are in line with the proportionality to the Kolmogorov timescale. The viscosity can be significantly increased using CMC as a viscosity modifier; however, due to the viscoelastic behavior of CMC, the effective viscosity decreases in the high shear environment inside the reactor. This leads to a much higher micromixing efficiency. It is shown that micromixing times can be estimated provided that the rheology of the liquids is known.