Characteristics of particle floating and heat transfer in an oscillating flow reactor

Abstract

In order to study the floating and heat transfer characteristics of catalyst particles in oscillating flow reactor (OFR), a self-made OFR device was employed to measure the floating velocity and heat transfer coefficient under different operating conditions and solid volume fractions (Ren: 203–1008, Reo: 269–3307, αs: 5%–20%), and the corresponding mathematical models were proposed. The results shown that oscillatory force had a high correlation with the solid phase volume fraction in OFR, and the floating velocities in OFR were obtained by experiments and models respectively. Compared with other drag force models, the Gidaspow and Arastoopour model can better describe the force between catalyst particles and liquid in OFR. The heat transfer coefficient increased first and then decreased with increasing oscillatory intensity, and it decreased with increasing solid volume fraction. The predicted values of floating velocity Uf and heat transfer coefficient hOFR were compared with the experimental data, and the results shown that most of relative errors of Uf and hOFR are within the range of 20% and 30% respectively in this paper. The research results provide basic data and theoretical base for the industrial application of OFR.