Premium
Liquid circulation hydrodynamics in an external loop airlift reactor
Author(s) -
Huang ZiBin,
Cheng ZhenMin
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
the canadian journal of chemical engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.404
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1939-019X
pISSN - 0008-4034
DOI - 10.1002/cjce.20696
Subject(s) - airlift , mechanics , circulation (fluid dynamics) , bubble , loop (graph theory) , draft tube , tube (container) , materials science , thermodynamics , physics , chemistry , engineering , mechanical engineering , mathematics , bioreactor , organic chemistry , combinatorics
The radial profiles of axial liquid velocity and gas hold‐ups are investigated in the riser of a pilot plant scale external loop airlift reactor (ELAR) using a modified Pavlov tube and differential pressure technique. The experimental investigation reveals that there exist two different kinds of liquid circulation structures in an ELAR, which has rarely been reported in the literature, namely internal liquid circulation, which exists only in the riser and external liquid circulation, which circulates through the downcomer. A power–law relationship is used to correlate the gas hold‐up and superficial gas velocity, which gives good agreement with experimental data. Experiments for axial liquid velocity profiles are analysed in analogy to a model described for a conventional bubble column. The results predicted by the model are in excellent agreement with the experimental data obtained under various operating conditions. © 2011 Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering