(554h) The Effect of the Presence of Internals on the Flow Regime in Industrial-Scale Bubble Column Reactor

In this work, for the first time, the effects of the variation in the low aspect ratio and the presence of heat exchanging internals on the flow regime transition in an industrial-scale pilot- plant bubble column have been investigated. The flow regime transition has been demarcated experimentally by the linear method (overall gas holdup and drift flux), and the non-linear method (Kolmogorov Entropy (KE)) using the liquid extension technique and the differential pressure technique, respectively. While, an advanced four-point optical fiber probe has been utilized to demarcate the transition velocities and characterize the bubble properties, which are the local gas holdup, bubble chord length, and bubble passing frequency, of each flow regime. The experiments were executed in an industrial-scale bubble column of I.D. 0.6 m and 3.96 m height that occupied by a heat exchanging internals covering 24 % of the total cross-sectional area of the bubble column. The superficial gas velocity varied from 0.005 m/s to 0.45 m/s.