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Hydrodynamics in rectangular air‐lift reactors: Scale‐up and the scale‐up and the influence of gas‐liquid separator design
Author(s) -
Siegel Marc,
Merchuk Jose C.
Publication year - 1991
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.5450690210
Subject(s) - separator (oil production) , mechanics , gas lift , nuclear engineering , materials science , lift (data mining) , petroleum engineering , thermodynamics , engineering , physics , computer science , data mining
Experiments were conducted on air‐lift reactors with different liquid volumes, aspect ratios, and gas‐liquid separator configurations, with constant downcomer to riser cross‐sectional area ratio and riser/downcomer height. Reactor performance was highly dependent on the gas‐liquid separator design. By changing the latter, the mode of operation could be changed from that of a concentric tube reactor (with gas recirculation) to an external loop reactor (without gas recirculation). Liquid velocity and overall gas hold‐up data were correlated to the power per liquid volume and “Disengagement Ratio”, a geometric parameter describing the separator's configuration. During scale‐up, similar gas hold‐ups and liquid velocities were found in laboratory and pilot reactors. A modified air‐lift reactor with an enlarged channel for a gas‐liquid separator also was studied.