Hydrodynamic Studies And Numerical Simulation Of An Internal Airlift Loop Reactor

In this paper, the hydrodynamics of a pilot-scale internal airlift loop reactor had been studied with three different distributors and three different gas liquid separators in air-water system. The reactor was constructed of 300mm diameter Plexiglas column and 4200mm in height. The outside diameter of the draft tube was 200mm and the height was 3300mm. The free area rates of the distributor were 0.266, 0.672 and 2.549 respectively. The heights of the separator were 115mm, 275mm and 420mm respectively. With computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software FLUENT6.1, two dimensions numerical simulation of hydrodynamics of an internal airlift loop reactor was conducted with Euler-Euler multiphase model.The gas holdups in the riser, downcomer and whole internal airlift loop reactor were measured in different configurations. The liquid velocity in the downcomer was measured by CTA. The effects of gas liquid...