| Abstract: | Gas holdup and liquid circulation of one conventional draft tube and three different convergence‐divergence draft tubes in an internal loop airlift reactor were investigated. Experiments were carried out in two‐phase systems with air‐water and air‐CMC (carboxyl methyl cellulose) solution and three‐phase system with air‐water‐resin particles. The two‐phase drift‐flux model was used to estimate gas holdup for three‐phase Newtonian and two‐phase non‐Newtonian systems. It is shown that gas holdup in convergence‐divergence draft tubes is higher than that in a conventional draft tube and increases with superficial gas velocity. Variation of the structural parameters of convergence‐divergence draft tubes has little effect on gas holdup in the two‐phase and three‐phase system. The mathematical model, which is based on a drift‐flux model, was developed to describe the liquid circulation velocity in the reactor satisfactorily. |
