| Abstract: | Slurry bubble column reactors (SBCR) is a three-phase fluidized reactor with outstanding advantages compared with other reactors
and is difficult to scale-up due to lack of information on hydrodynamics and mass transfer over a wide range of operating
conditions of commercial interest. In this paper, an experiment was conducted to investigate the bubble behavior in SBCR with
a height of 5600 mm and an interior diameter of 480 mm. Bubble rise velocity, bubble diameter, and gas holdup in different
radial and axial positions are measured in SBCR using four-channel conductivity probe. Tap water, air, and glass beads (mean
diameter 75–150 μm) are used as liquid, gas, and solid phases, respectively. It shows that hydrodynamic parameters have good
regularity in SBCR. Moreover, a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package, Fluent, was used to simulate the process
in SBCR. The simulations were carried out using axi-symmetric 2-D grids. Data obtained from experiment and CFD simulation
are compared, and results show that the tendency of simulation is almost uniform with the experiment, which can help to obtain
further understanding about multiphase flow process and establish a model about the synthesis of alcohol ether fuel in SBCR. |
