CFD SIMULATION OF BUBBLE COLUMN REACTOR BY INVESTIGATING THE EFFECT OF TRAYS ON OVERALL GAS HOLDUP

Authors

  • Arif Khan Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS), Nilore, Islamabad, Pakistan
  • Samrana Sharif Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS), Nilore, Islamabad, Pakistan
  • A. N. K. Wardag Department of Chemical Engineering, Sever Institute of Technology, Washington University, USA
  • I. R. Chughtai Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS), Nilore, Islamabad, Pakistan
  • M. H. Al-Dahhan Department of Chemical Engineering, Sever Institute of Technology, Washington University, USA

Abstract

In the current research work, CFD model has been developed to estimate overall gas holdup for co-current air-water system in a Trayed Bubble Column Reactor (TBCR), operating in bubbly flow regime. The TBCR considered in this study has 19 cm inner diameter and 274 cm length. Unsteady 2d-axi symmetric, Eulerian-Eulerian multiphase model with segregated solver has been considered while turbulence effects are introduced by using generalized k-ε model with the option of each-phase turbulence model. The effect of trays has been studied on overall gas holdup while liquid superficial velocity, tray’s open area and bubble diameter have been kept constant. Simulations have been performed for various values of superficial gas velocities in the range of 1-8 cm/s and constant superficial liquid velocity of 0.5 cm/sec. The overall gas holdups found by simulations, have been compared with experiments [1] and with internationally published correlations for bubble column reactors by Kato et al. [5], Chen et al. [2] and Vinaya et al. [8], which shows a fair concurrence of the CFD results. It is found that overall gas holdup significantly increases by introducing trays to the column.

References

J. Alvare, “Gas Holdup and Liquid Phase

Mixing in Trayed Bubble Column Reactorsâ€.

M.S. Thesis, Department of Chemical

Engineering, Washington University in St.

Louis, St. Louis, MO, (2002).

B.H. Chen and N.S. Yang, Ind. Eng. Chem.

Res. 28 (1989) 1405.

B. H. Chen, N. S. Yang and A.F. Mc Millan,

Can. J. Chem. Eng. 64 (1986) 387.

FLUENT 6.2.16 User's Guide, Fluent

Incorporated (2002).

Y. Kato, T. Kago and S. Morooka,. J. Chem.

Eng. Jpn. 17 (1984) 429.

Y.T. Shah, B.G. Kelkar, S.P. Godbole and

W.D. Deckwer, Design Parameters

Estimations for Bubble Column Reactors.

AIChE J. 28, No. 3 (1982) 353.

G. Wild, H.Z. Li, S. Poncin and E. Olmos,

Inter. J. of Chem. Reactor Engg. 1 (2003) 1.

M. Vinaya, Multistage Bubble Column and

Liquid Pulsed Column. D.Sc. Thesis,

Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian

Institute of Technology, Madras,

India,(1994).

Downloads

Published

29-06-2020

How to Cite

[1]
A. Khan, S. Sharif, A. N. K. Wardag, I. R. Chughtai, and M. H. Al-Dahhan, “CFD SIMULATION OF BUBBLE COLUMN REACTOR BY INVESTIGATING THE EFFECT OF TRAYS ON OVERALL GAS HOLDUP”, The Nucleus, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 161–166, Jun. 2020.

Issue

Section

Articles