Effect of Static Liquid Height on Gas Holdup of a Bubble Column Reactor

Abstract

In this paper, the hydrodynamics of a direct contact heat transfer in a Bubble Column Reactor are investigated using a three dimensional, Eulerian-Eulerian Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model. In particular, the effect of the static liquid (H) height on gas holdup (αg) is examined by using three different heights (45, 55, and 65 cm). Using experimental data, the model is validated and compared to a previous two-dimensional CFD model. It is found that the three-dimensional system can precisely model the trends of gas holdup as the static liquid height height changes. In addition, compared to the 2D model, the 3D model is more precise and overestimated the gas holdup. In addition, increasing the static liquid height causes the gas holdup to decrease; where the gas holdup decreases by 11% when the static liquid height increases from 45cm to 65cm.