Power consumption is an important parameter in the design and scale-up of stirred tank reactors. The effects of relative liquid volume, rotational speed and fill level on power consumption were experimentally investigated in a cylindrical stirred tank. The discrete element method (DEM) and Hertz-Mindlin with JKR model were used to investigate the effect of the adhesion force of particles with different relative liquid volumes on the power consumption. Results showed that the power consumption first increased and then decreased with the increase of the relative liquid volume, and reached a maximum when the relative liquid volume was 0.0162. With the increase of the rotational speed, the power consumption increased faster, but the rotational speed influence index on the power consumption decreased first and then increased with the increase of the relative liquid volume. The maximum power consumption was about 1.8 times of the power consumption with saturated particles. A new method for indirect measurement of cohesion between particles was proposed, and a linear relationship between power consumption and cohesion was obtained.