Abstract: The progress of the research on CFD numerical simulation approaches for stirred tank reactors is reviewed, including the imposed impeller boundary condition method, the inner-outer approach, sliding mesh model, multiple frames of reference (MFR) and the snap shot approach method. According to the characteristics of the modeling methods, several main points, i.e., the presence of baffles, the capture of trailing vortex, the modeling of more complex impeller shapes, the choice of turbulence models, the effect of grid resolution and the difference of discretization schemes, are analyzed. Numerical simulation of stirred tank by using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach is still under further study.