(609b) Investigation of the Effect of Internals On Hydrodynamics in Bubble Column Reactors Using Computed Tomography (CT)

Bubble column and slurry bubble column reactors are widely used in the chemical, biochemical and petrochemical industries. Based on reaction engineering consideration and economics, bubble/ slurry bubble column reactors are considered as one of the most promising reactors for heat removal and mass transfer. Many applications of these reactors involve highly exothermic chemical reactions which require large number of heat exchanging tubes for efficient heat removing and for maintaining the desired temperature. However, most of the published studies use bubble columns without accounting for heat exchanging internals. Hence, the effect of internals on the hydrodynamics of bubble/slurry bubble columns has been insufficiently investigated in the existing literature. The effect of heat exchanging internals would significantly affect the reactor hydrodynamic and transport parameters and hence, its performance. Consequently, successful reactor design and scale-up require a proper understanding of the effect of internals on the hydrodynamics, especially the local characteristics of the gas and liquid flows.

In this work, the effect of internals, which mimics the system that is used in the Ficher-Tropsch (FT) process, on the time average cross-sectional distribution of gas holdup using gamma ray computed tomography (CT) has been studied. A wide range of superficial gas velocities based on free area for the flow have been used. The obtained knowledge enhances our understanding of the effect of internals on the local gas holdup distribution along the bed height. The data is valuable on a benchmark data for verification of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation and models. In the presentation, detailed results and findings will be discussed.