Anchor impellers are used specially for highly viscous flow, with the viscosity ranging from 10 to 100 Pa.s, which is typical of polymer reactions and some processes in food industries. The reactions are normally carried out under laminar flow. Anchor impellers are also suited for pseudoplastic and thixotropic fluids. Despite its importance in chemical industries, there are few works, which study anchor type impellers. The computational works for these impellers in the literature are very scarce and normally show a coarse grid and rough approximations to the shape of the vessel. This work presents a detailed model of a stirred vessel using anchor impellers. It calculates for the three components of the velocity on a two dimensional grid. The simulations refer to the secondary flow, which is of particular interest because, under laminar flow, it controls heat transfer. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd.Anchor impellers are used specially for highly viscous flow, with the viscosity ranging from 10 to 100 Pa.s, which is typical of polymer reactions and some processes in food industries. The reactions are normally carried out under laminar flow. Anchor impellers are also suited for pseudoplastic and thixotropic fluids. Despite its importance in chemical industries, there are few works, which study anchor type impellers. The computational works for these impellers in the literature are very scarce and normally show a coarse grid and rough approximations to the shape of the vessel. This work presents a detailed model of a stirred vessel using anchor impellers. It calculates for the three components of the velocity on a two dimensional grid. The simulations refer to the secondary flow, which is of particular interest because, under laminar flow, it controls heat transfer.2402/07/1517451751Edwards, M.F., Wilkinson, W.L., Heat transfer in agitated vessels part I (1972) The Chemical Engineer, pp. 310-319Foumeny, E.A., Holiday, S.O., Sandhu, K.S., Prediction of flow patterns in polymerisation systems using CFD (1993) Proceedings of 8th International Conference on Num. Meth. in Laminar and Turbulent Flow, pp. 517-528Kaminoyama, M., Saito, F., Kamiwano, M., Numerical analysis of flow of a Bingham fluid in an anchor impeller (1994) International Chemical Engineering, 34 (2), pp. 263-269Kaminoyama, M., Saito, F., Kamiwano, M., Flow analogy of pseudoplastic liquid in geometrically similar stirred vessels based on numerical analysis (1990) Journal of Chemical Engineering Japan, 23 (2), pp. 214-221Kaminoyama, M., Akabane, K., Arai, K., Saito, F., Kamiwano, M., Numerical analysis of three-dimensional flow of a pseudo-plastic liquid in a stirred vessel with a turbine impeller (1990) International Chemical Engineering, 30 (4), pp. 720-728Kaminoyama, M., Saito, F., Kamiwano, M., Numerical analysis of mixing processes for high-viscosity pseudoplastic liquids in mixers with various plate-type impellers (1993) International Chemical Engineering, 33 (3), pp. 506-515Kuncewiez, G., Three-dimensional model of laminar liquid flow for paddle impellers and flat-blade turbines (1992) Chemical & Engineering Science, 47 (15-16), pp. 3959-3967Nunhez, J.R., McGreavy, C., Industrial mixing technology: Chemical and biological applications (1994) American Institute of Chemical Engineering Symposium Series, 90, pp. 55-70Nunhez, J.R., McGreavy, C., A comparison of the heat transfer in helical coils and jacketed stirred tank reactors (1995) Brazilian Journal of Chemical Engineering, 12 (1)Rubart, L., Bohme, G., Numerical simulation of shear-thinning flow problems in mixing vessels (1991) Theoretical Computation in Fluid Dynamics, 3, pp. 95-115Van Doormaal, J.P., Raithby, G.D., Enhancements of the simple method predicting incompressible fluid flows (1984) Numerical Heat Transfer, 7, pp. 147-163