(617bh) Hydrodynamics of Gas-Liquid Upflow through Packed Column with Spherical Random Packing  

Abstract:

 Characteristics of local bubble in packed bed reactor, including gas holdups, liquid holdups and their respective velocities, were measured using optical fiber probe manufactured to measured hydrodynamic parameters. Previous studies have validated the use of single tip probes for for simultaneous measurement of lcal bubble properties at atmospheric conditions; however no study has been currently reported for two tips inside multiphase (Gas, Liquid and solid ) upflow packed bed reactor. Experiments were conducted in a 11 Inch inner diameter (0.27940 m) and 3.5 feet height. The randomly packing material (spherical catalyst with diameter 3 mm) was supported inside the column. The system used is Air-water with 100 kpa pressure. Superficial gas velocities were varied between 0.01282, 0.0256, 0.0385, 0.0513 and 0.06418 m/s, and superficial liquid velocity between 0.6413, 1.8521 and 3.76 m/s. Radial profiles at atmospheric conditions validated the optical probe measurements in water. Local holdups and the velocities were adequately measured in water. The advantage of using this techniques is, it can be employed to the local spots inside the bed and characterize the flow behavior at that local occupied volume space. The emphasis for optical probe is the time series obtained which helps locally tracking in time the values of holdup and velocity, which in turn indicates in time domain the local condition of flow and how the maldistribution locally changes with time. This kind of information has been obtained for the first time in these kinds of reactors. In this study bed is scanned both axially and radially using this technique.