Hydrodynamics Of Gas Liquid Reactors

The design of chemical reactors and their safety are as critical to the success of a chemical process as the actual chemistry taking place within the reactor. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the practical aspects of multiphase reactor design and operation with an emphasis on safety and clean technology. It considers not only standard operation conditions, but also the problems of runaway reaction conditions and protection against ensuing over-pressure. Hydrodynamics of Multiphase Reactors addresses both practical and theoretical aspects of this topic. Initial chapters discuss various different types of gas/liquid reactors from a practical viewpoint, and later chapters focus on the modelling of multiphase systems and computational methods for reactor design and problem solving. The material is written by experts in their specific fields and will include chapters on the following topics: Multiphase flow, Bubble columns, Sparged stirred vessels, Macroscale modelling, Microscale modelling, Runaway conditions, Behaviour of vessel contents, Choked flow, Measurement techniques.

Reviews and compares the major types of bioreactors, defines their pros and cons, and identifies research needs and figures of merit that have yet to be addressed Describes common modes of operation in bioreactors Covers the three common bioreactor types, including stirred-tank bioreactors, bubble column bioreactors, and airlift bioreactors Details less common bioreactors types, including fixed bed bioreactors and novel bioreactor designs Discusses advantages and disadvantages of each bioreactor and provides a procedure for optimal bioreactor selection based on current process needs Reviews the problems of bioreactor selection globally while considering all bioreactor options rather than concentrating on one specific bioreactor type

Originating from a research programme carried out at the Institute of Chemical Process Fundamentals, Prague, this volume aims to provide a review of current knowledge in the field of gas-liquid reactors, relating the results of theoretical studies to practical reactor design.

Slurry bubble column reactors are intensively used as a multiphase reactor in the chemical, biochemical, and petrochemical industries for carrying out reactions and mass transfer operations in which a gas, made up of one or several reactive components, comes into contact or reacts with a liquid. This volume describes the hydrodynamics of three-phase gas-liquid-solid flow in a downflow slurry bubble column. The efficiency of the downflow gas interacting system is characterized by the self-entrainment of secondary gas. The book covers the gas entrainment phenomena, gas holdup characteristics, pressure drop, gasliquid mixing characteristics, bubble size distribution, interfacial phenomena, and the mass transfer phenomena in the downflow slurry system. This volume will be useful in chemical and biochemical industries and in industrial research and development sectors, as well as in advanced education courses in this area. The book will be helpful for further understanding the multiphase behavior in gas interacting multiphase systems for research and development. The hydrodynamic and mass transfer characteristics discussed will be useful in the design and installation of the modified slurry bubble column in industry for specific applications.

This book presents experimental and numerical methods that have been developed during six years of targeted research within the DFG priority program SPP 1740, elucidating the interaction between hydrodynamics, mass transfer and transport as well as chemical reactions in bubbly flows. A special feature of this book is its focus on an interdisciplinary research approach with contributions from chemistry, mathematics and engineering sciences, providing enhanced or novel experimental methods, models and numerical simulations. This book provides fundamental knowledge to students about the current state of knowledge regarding transport processes in reactive bubbly flows as well as to scientists, emphasizing pressing research questions and further current demands for fundamental research. Engineers from the chemical industries will get valuable insights into relevant gas-liquid processes and benefit from recommendations concerning the design of gas-liquid reactors and laboratory experiments for studying the performance of gas-liquid reactions in their own lab.

The widespread adoption of microreactors has been hindered by a lack of knowledge regarding rules and parameters needed for their design. This dissertation deals with the investigation of interfacial area and liquid mass transport in microreactors for gas/liquid reactions. Observations of a reduction in conversion occurring when changing from a glass laboratory device to a stainless steel process device motivated investigations into the effect of material and surface properties on the gas/liquid flow and reaction. This work takes a look inside the machined microstructures produced at the Institute for Micro Process Engineering of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and investigates the nature of the solid surfaces resulting from the machining process—the surface roughness and the contact angle of the resulting surface. The effect of wettability on gas/liquid flow in microreactors has been investigated in capillaries of various materials. The absorption of carbon dioxide into aqueous solutions of sodium hydroxide has been used to investigate gas/liquid flow and reaction in capillaries and in a microstructured falling film reactor. Under certain limiting assumptions depending upon the exact rates of reaction and transport, values of the interfacial area and liquid mass transport coefficient can be derived from measurements of reaction. This dissertation contributes a small step towards a better understanding of how measurements of the interfacial area and mass transfer coefficient can be performed, demonstrates why the effect of material wettability cannot be ignored, and provides a stronger basis for further work in the development of general correlations describing microstructured gas/liquid reactors.