Study On Performance And Scale-up Rule Of Twin-Tangential Annular Flow Gas Distributor

The influence of design parameters on the performance of gas distributor wasstudied with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in this paper. In the result, thescale-up rule of distributor and optimal design parameters were obtained. Not only quantitative analysis with pressure drop (?P) and maldistribution factor(M), but also qualitative analysis of contours of velocity, pressure, turbulent kineticenergy (k) and turbulent dissipation rate (ε) were carried out to characterize theperformance of gas distributor. The distance between tower wall and sleeve, the height of sleeve, the height ofbaffles and the number of baffles as well as eccentricity of sleeve are the factors thathave influence on performance of gas distributor. In addition, the gas distributorsequipped with air lift pipe were researched. The followed results have been obtainedthrough simulation under the condition in this paper: ?P decreases as the distanceincreases between tower wall and sleeve, but M decreases firstly, and then increases.The result shows good performance when the distance is (0.25/6)D in view of abovetwo factors; M decreases as the height of sleeve increases, but ?P increases. When theheight of sleeve is more than (2.5/1.5)d, M hasn't obvious change. At the same time, ?Pincreases sharply; M decreases before the height of the first baffle increases to(0.75/1.5)d, and ?P increases rapidly as the height of first baffle beyond (0.75/1.5)d; Mdecreases as the number of baffles increases, but ?P increases. When the number ofbaffle is more than 7, M hasn't obvious change, while ?P increase sharply; Eccentricityof sleeve has remarkable effects on the performance of gas distributor, especially for ?P,which drops sharply when sleeve is away from inlet; The performance of packedcolumn is improved greatly when twin-tangential annular flow gas distributor isequipped with air lift pipe. In addition, flow field of air lift distributor was measured in order to test thereliability and veracity of model and software. The comparison between experimentresults and simulation results shows that it is feasible and authentic for simulation of flowfield with FLUENT software.