Gas–liquid mass transfer in a new three-phase stirred airlift reactor

The gas–liquid mass transfer performances of a novel three-phase reactor involving both airlift and mechanical stirring have been tested using aqueous solutions of glucose. Stirring in addition to classical airlift leads to an importance increase of k_La. The absolute increase depends mainly on the stirrer speed are not on the gas velocity. A slight effect of the solid loading with a maximum at about 2% (w/v) was observed. Two correlations that show the influence of physical parameters are proposed for both water and glucose solutions. © 1998 SCI