6 replies to this topic

[suryatej001]

I am being confused by these terms "Blending,mixing,agitation".
what is the difference between Blending,mixing and agitation?

[S.AHMAD]

1. BLENDING is a MIXING process of two or more blending components
2. AGITATION is the process to ensure a faster completion of the mixing process to reach homogeneous mixture
3. That is the way I understand it

[JMW]

A blend and a mixture are different, to my opinion.
A blend, such as a fuel oil blend may have a set of aggregate properties that are determined by the components but where compatible hydrocarbons are blended will remain stable across the operating temperature range and exhibit the properties of the blend.

A mixture can be separated out into its original components.

Agitation or mixing is the process of combining the components to produce a homogeneous fluid.

[S.AHMAD]

1. Let me give you a real life example in oil refinery operation
2. Gasoline is produced by blending of various belending components.
3. These blending components are, for example, reformate, light naphtha, MTBE, i-C5 etc
4. There two type of blending methods: inline blending and tank blending
5. For inline blending, all the blending components are pump through an INLINE MIXER at a specified flowrate according to the blending quantity of respective blending component
6. In this case, mixing process and homogeneous mixture is achieved by the inline mixer (agitation process)
7. For tank blending method, the blending components are pumped to a blending/mixing tank and mixed to homogeneous by tank mixer (agitation process)
8. I hope you can interpret the meaning of blending, mixing and agitation from the above example

Edited by S.AHMAD, 03 November 2011 - 09:35 PM.

[suryatej001]

Thank u sir

[kkala]

I would add that blending has also the intent of making a better product compared to average of blended components. Cambridge Advanced Learners' Dictionary says blending = mixing, but a local English- Greek dictionary contains that meaning, which seems to be right. We blend several petroleum products (as S.AHMAD explains) to form useful gasoline or diesel , this also occurs for several tobacco qualities.
It is noted that at list here a gasoline (or diesel or fuel oil) blender is composed of the online static mixer (never heard it called blender) and the relevant instrumentation. Blending of gases was not heard of either (only mixing).

[chemind]

Agitation refers to the induced motion of a material is a specified way, for example circular motion in standard CSTR,

The entirely different operation from agitation is mixing.(the concept of phase homogeneity)

Mixing is the random distribution of two or more phases.

let's take a tank with cold water, it can be agitated but not mixed, to call it a mixing operation you have to add hot water which has different state of condition from cold water. Now the same tank has taken up from agitation operation to mixing operation.

in place of hot water you can have any material, but in case of blending you have to use the similar family material( diesel to biodiesel ) to have a homogenous phase

Edited by chemind, 18 December 2011 - 11:40 PM.