Effect of Mass Transport by Convective Flow on the Distribution of Dissolved Carbon Monoxide in a Stirred Tank

Abstract

The dissolved gas concentration in a stirred tank has significant importance in the chemical and biological processing industries as mass transfer from the injected gas to an aqueous solution must occur for the gas to be usable. As the solubility of the gas in the solution is low and there are no probes for measuring dissolved gas concentration, a volumetric mass transfer coefficient is selected as a criterion of design for the scale-up of stirred reactors. However, it is difficult to accurately predict the non-equilibrium state dissolved gas distribution using only the volumetric mass transfer coefficient. In this study, computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based numerical analysis was conducted to systematically evaluated the effects of mass transport by convective flow on the distribution of dissolved carbon monoxide in a stirred tank. The dissolved carbon monoxide distribution and the volumetric mass transfer coefficient were compared at various rotational speeds of the impellers. At a rotational speed of 900 RPM, the Pearson correlation coefficient was about 0.52, which denotes a moderate correlation. In contrast, Pearson correlation coefficients less than 0.20 were obtained for speeds less than 700 RPM, indicating a weak correlation. By considering the dissolved carbon monoxide transport that occurs during convective flow in stirred tanks, we can provide more accurate information about the dissolved carbon monoxide distribution.