Author(s)

Reza Davarnejad, Ehsan Bagheripoor, Abolfazl Sahraei

Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Arak University, Arak, Iran.

In this work, the overall gas hold-up in the riser and down-comer of three internal airlift reactors with a working volume of 10.5, 32 and 200 l at the range of temperatures 18℃ - 21℃, under atmospheric pressure was simulated using Com-putational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The range of superficial gas velocity was 0.5 - 3 cm/s. The three reactors geometrically were similar to each other. CFD simulation and experimental data showed that the gas hold-up in the riser and down-comer increased by increasing the reactor scale. It was concluded that the simulated data were in good agreement with the experimental ones obtained from the literature.

Internal Loop Airlift Reactor; Gas Hold-Up, CFD

R. Davarnejad, E. Bagheripoor and A. Sahraei, "CFD Simulation of Scale Influence on the Hydrodynamics of an Internal Loop Airlift Reactor," Engineering, Vol. 4 No. 10, 2012, pp. 668-674. doi: 10.4236/eng.2012.410085.