Analysis of fluidization quality of a fluidized bed with staged gas feed for reactions involving gas‐volume reduction

Abstract

AbstractA significant defluidization occurs when carrying out reactions involving a decrease in gas volume in a fluidized catalyst bed. The cause of this phenomenon is a decrease in the gas velocity in the emulsion phase below the minimum fluidization velocity. Fluidization quality is improved by a staged gas feed when hydrogenation of CO2 is carried out. To evaluate the experimental results, two parameters are introduced; gas‐volume reduction rate and gas‐volume ratio. Fluidization quality and defluidization zone are indicated as a map using these parameters. The vertical distributions of these parameters are calculated using a reactor model to obtain operating lines. The calculation shows that fluidization quality can be improved by operating the reactor by avoiding the operating lines of the defluidization zone in the map. For this purpose, it is required to control the gas‐volume ratio at a level near unity and maintain the gas‐volume reduction rate below 0.01/s. © 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2010