RushtonTurbine

Rushton turbine, sometimes referred to as a Rushton disk turbine, is a widely used disk-type impeller in stirred-tank reactors designed for high-shear liquid mixing and gas dispersion. The impeller features a circular disk with flat, straight blades attached around the periphery, commonly arranged in four blades evenly spaced around the disk. The blades are oriented so that their faces are roughly perpendicular to the shaft, creating strong local shear as the disk rotates.

In operation, the Rushton turbine induces turbulent flow with prominent radial components. The combination of high shear near the blade edges and circulating flow promotes rapid homogenization of liquids and, in gas–liquid systems, efficient gas dispersion and bubble break-up. The design is particularly effective in achieving good phase distribution in low- to moderate-viscosity fluids but provides less pumping capacity for highly viscous liquids compared with axial-flow impellers.

Applications of the Rushton turbine span both laboratory and industrial settings. It is commonly used in fermentation, chemical synthesis, crystallization, and polymerization processes where high shear and thorough mixing are required. The impeller is often paired with baffles to control flow patterns and with other impeller types to tailor overall mixing performance.

Key performance factors include the impeller diameter relative to the tank (D/T), blade geometry, rotation speed (and resulting Reynolds number), and fluid properties. The Rushton turbine remains a standard reference design in process engineering for high-shear mixing and gas dispersion.