Aquacultural Engineering 31 (2004) 117121

Design of high efciency surface aerators Part 3. Dimensional analysis of rotor performance
Beatriz Cancino
Department of Food Engineering, Universidad Catlica de Valpara so, Waddington 716, Valpara so, Chile Received 1 April 2003; accepted 14 March 2004

Abstract This paper is the third and nal part of this work. The rst two parts studied the mass transfer equations for oxygen in water and presented equations to design propeller of the surface aerator based on its similitude to an axial ow pump. Additionally, the results of aeration test with 23 different rotor setups were presented, in which the highest SAE = 1.805 kg O2 /kWh, was for the rotor designed with the axial ow pump criteria. The aim of this part is to describe the aerators behavior as a general equation, using dimensional analysis. These equations are dened in terms of geometric characteristics and aeration efciency (oxygen transfer rate/input power). It can be concluded that the aeration efciency improves with the Froude number, but is inversely related to the speed and diameter of the propeller. 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Surface aerator design; Surface aerator efciency

1. Introduction This work, which nalizes with this third article, consists in the study of the centrifugal surface aerators used in aquaculture to increase the amount of oxygen in the water. In the rst part of this work, the focus were the equations that describe the transfer of oxygen to the water and the equations used for the design of the aerator blades. In the second part, 23 different rotor congurations were tested in order to determine their mass transfer coefcient and the AE. The rotor conguration consists in the most important parameters of the aerator: the type of propeller, the immersion percentage and the inlet and exit angles of the blades. In addition, it was shown in that article that the use of design criteria for the

Tel.: +56-32-274225; fax: +56-32-274226. E-mail address: beatriz.cancino@ucv.cl (B. Cancino).

0144-8609/$ see front matter 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.aquaeng.2004.03.004

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rotor based on the similitude to an axial ow pump is adequate, giving the greatest value of SAE = 1.805 kg O2 /kWh. Nevertheless, the mathematical analysis requires equations that depend on some important parameters that describe the phenomena. That is, several independent variables are related through some equation to the dependant variable of interest. These equations are the ones that are explored in this third article using dimensional analysis. Using dimensional analysis, the equations needed to scale the results can be found. In the case of aeration, the objective is to identify the variables that inuence the design and group them in non-dimensional numbers. In this manner, for example, when varying the diameter of the blade the dimensional equation can be manipulated so that it is possible to obtain the value of AE without having to repeat the experiment. Therefore, with this model it is possible to study the variables which most inuence the efciency of the aerator and the manner in which they do. Zlokarnik (1991) showed different applications of dimensional analysis to resolve chemical engineering problems, particularly in aeration. He developed tools for the dimensional analysis of pressure aeration systemsusing diffusersand surface aeration systems. Others authors, Ahmad and Boyd (1988) and Kolega et al. (2004) have shown the design of a paddle wheel surface aerator, but only the latter used dimensional analysis for the correlation of the main parameters of the design. 2. Dimensional analysis Analysis of the surface aerators mass transfer from the air to the water was based on theory of dimensional analysis (Zlokarnik, 1991). The relevant parameters for a surface aerator are AE Dr N 1 2 hprof g Q P Aeration efciency at 10 C (kg O2 /kWh) Rotor diameter (m) Water density (kg/m3 ) Water viscosity (kg/(m s)) Revolutions per time unit of the motor 1/Inlet angle of paddle (rad1 ) 1/Outlet angle of paddle (rad1 ) Immersion depth (m) Gravity (m/s2 ) Water ow splashed by the Aerator (m3 /s) Aerator power (W)

For the dimensional analyses it is necessary to build the main matrix with the relevant parameters. M L T 1 3 0 Dr 0 1 0 N 0 0 1 AE1 0 2 2 P Q1 1 1 2 1 1 1 g 0 1 2 hprof 0 1 0

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Angles 1 and 2 are not put into the matrix because they are dimensional parameters per se (Zlokarnik, 1991). Making row operations M L T 1 3 0 Dr 0 1 0 N 0 0 1 AE1 0 2 2 P Q1 1 2 2 1 2 1 g 0 1 2 hprof 0 1 0

After row operation to the matrix, the following dimensionless numbers are obtained:
2 2 1 1 = P(QDr N ) 3 2 = Q(Dr N)1

2 3 = (Dr N)1 = Re1 1 5 = 2 1 7 = 1 1 6 = hprof Dr

4 = g(Dr N 2 )1 = Fr1

2 8 = (AEDr N 2 )1

Re, Reynolds number; Fr, Froude number. The resulting equation is 8 = f1 (1 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ) replacing and rearranging
1 u w AE = c2 (QP1 )f (Dr N)j (Re)m (Fr)p (2 )s (Dr h prof ) (1 )

(1)

(2)

making Eq. (2) linear ln(AE) = ln(c2 ) + f ln(QP1 ) + j ln(Dr N) + m ln(Re) + p ln(Fr) + s ln(2 ) +u ln(Dr hprof ) + w ln(1 ) (3)

In order to determine the values of the exponents of the proposed equation, the multiple linear regression method was used (Cancino, 2001; Zlokarnik, 1991). In this equation, the aeration efciency is dened explicitly in function of the Q/P ratio. Using the results shown in part 2 of this work, it was possible to calculate the coefcients of Eq. (3). The Reynold number was between 210,000 and 760,000, which is a completely turbulent ow. The Froude number was between 4.1 and 13.1. Eq. (3) generalizes the relationship between AE and the Q/P ratio, but the coefcients are distributed into two groups. Flat rotors go in rst group whereas Kinetic, Conrad and German rotors go together in the second group. The separation of rotors into two groups was made because in the second group the inlet and the outlet angles are different, while in the rst group the angles are the same. The statistical analysis method (multiple linear regression) was used with the lineal equation for each group. For the Flat rotors: ln(c2 ) = 0, f = 0.0461, j = 2.3945, m = 0.003778, p = 1.3696, s = 0.598, u = 0.039, w = 0. For Kinetic, Conrad and German rotors the coefcients are: ln(c2 ) = 0, f = 0.02678, j = 5.7148, m = 0.3388, p = 4.8695, s = 0.3676, u = 0.1256, w = 0.25.

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Table 1 Values of statistical parameters of the multivariable regression for correlation in Eq. (2) Statistical F F (k,n (k + 1)) Standard estimated error D (DurbinWatson) Result Flat rotors 6.8436 F0.01 (6.8) = 7.19 0.1538 2.587 Not signicant Kinetic, Conrad and German rotors 1.3465 F0.05 (7.2) = 236.8 0.2205 1.851 Not signicant

The multiple correlation coefcient for the Flat rotors was r = 0.915. This indicates that 83.7% of the total variation of the variables value can be represented by a linear equation. For the second group, the result of the multiple correlation coefcient was r = 0.91, which means that a linear equation accounts for 82.5% of the variables value. Table 1 shows the statistical parameters for these groups of equations. The null hypothesis for Eq. (3) with the rst group (Flat rotors) is rejected with a signicance level of 0.01, and the value of the calculated DurbinWatson statistic (D in Table 1), does not give any information about the possible correlation of the variables. 3. Discussion Comparing the calculated and experimental values of the aeration efciency for the Flat, Kinetic, Conrad and German rotors, a correlation can be found between the calculated values and the experimental ones. This correlation quanties how representative Eq. (2)

Fig. 1. Relation between the experimental values and the calculated values of aeration efciency (AE) for the Flat group and the German, Conrad and Kinetic propeller group, according to Eq. (3).

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can be when using the coefcients of each group. Fig. 1 shows this analysis. A straight line with slope 1.0 would be present in the case of an ideal representation. Looking at Fig. 1, we can see that the regression coefcient for the line that represents the behavior of Kinetic, Conrad and German rotors is far from the ideal value of 1.0. This means that the coefcients of Eq. (2) represent 56.5% of the propellers experimental values. For the at propellers however, the equation resembles the actual behavior more closely, since 80.3% of the experimental values are represented by Eq. (2). The difference between the exactness and the how well data is represented by an equation that contains logarithms and another equation that contains exponential terms is due to the inuence of the exponents, for both the group of propellers with at blades or for the Conrad, German and Kinetic propeller group. For a linear equation, the method used to determine the constant coefcients causes a certain amount of error. This percentage can grow when the equation is presented with exponential terms. Therefore, the correlation coefcient will vary between the linear and exponential representations of the same equation. The Dr /h ratio (which corresponds to a dimensionless number obtained from the method carried out) for the in the full sized commercial aerator that uses the German 2 propeller is 1.3 and the immersion percentage is 333%. A Dr /h value greater than 1 means that the propeller has a diameter greater than the vertical distance at which it is submerged. As the propeller goes deeper into the water the power consumption increases. The smallest value of Dr /h studied was 1.6. The reason for not studying smaller values than this was the limit given by the nominal power of the motor, 100 W.

4. Conclusions According to the dimensional analysis, experimental tests with models and the equations that describe the aeration phenomenon, it can be concluded that the efciency improves with the Froude number, but is inversely related to speed and diameter of the propeller. The other factors depend on whether a at propeller or another design is used.

References
Ahmad, T., Boyd, C.E., 1988. Design and performance of paddle wheel aerators. Aquacult. Eng. 7, 3962. Cancino, B., 2001. Doctoral Thesis, Optimizacin y estudio de un aerador supercial para pozas de cultivo de peces con suministro de energ a por paneles fotovoltaicos. Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Mar a, Valparaiso, Chile. Kolega, J.J., Gordon, N., Quintin, G., 2004. Analyses for oxygen transfer coefcients. In: Rotor Aeration Systems. pp. 6375. Zlokarnik, M., 1991. Dimensional Analysis and Scale-up in Chemical Engineering. Springer Verlag, Berlin.