A new patent has been awarded to a team of engineers from Alden Research Laboratory and Westfall Manufacturing Company. This patent marks the first awarded to Jim Daniel, Senior Engineer in Alden's Gas Flow Engineering group; it is the third one awarded to Kimbal Hall, Principal Engineer at Alden. As for Westfall, they hold numerous patents on static mixer designs, including the newest member of their patented offerings: a Static Mixer with Curved Fins.
Despite the availability of other static mixing devices, Westfall wanted to add an offering to their list of products to cover a wider range of applications. Westfall CEO, Bob Glanville, asked for Alden's assistance to develop and test a design that would achieve the same or better mixing outcome with lower head loss. It would need to do so in the shortest distance downstream from the mixing device.
Kimbal Hall stated, "after several iterations refining the concept, we came up with a design that hit the sweet spot.”
Figures 1 & 2:
CFD Simulations were used to optimize the CoV of the newest Westfall Static Mixer design
Alden's team used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling to help Westfall achieve the desired coefficient of variation (CoV) in the design. As a result of the CFD simulations, the team was able to model different mixing media to analyze various design iterations to reduce pressure losses across the mixer and increase mixing for shorter laying lengths. The final, patented result, is a Static Mixer with Curved Fin that accomplishes these objectives in a manner that is inexpensive, easy to fabricate from a wide variety of materials and operates in a trouble-free manner.
This is not the first time that Alden and Westfall have worked together.
Terri St. Vincent, Operations Manager at Westfall says, "Alden Laboratory has been a key partner in the development of new Westfall products since 1998. We certainly intend to continue this working relationship."
About Westfall
Westfall specializes in high-performance drop-in motionless mixers used in pipeline and blending systems for a variety of industries, including water and wastewater treatment, oil, gas and biofuels, chemical, food and beverage, aerospace and insulation. Find out more: http://westfallstaticmixers.com/
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