Effective interfacial area in agitated liquid—liquid contactors

Abstract

Liquid extraction accompanied by fast pseudo-first-order reaction was used to evaluate the values of the effective interfacial area in agitated liquid—liquid contactors. It was found that alkaline hydrolysis of n-hexyl, 2-ethyl hexyl, n-octyl formates and n-butyl trichloroacetate could be conveniently employed for this purpose. Vessels ranging in capacity from 1 to 500 1. and provided with appropriate size of baffles and turbine, paddle and propeller agitators were used. The variables investigated included the speed of the agitator, ratio of the agitator diameter to the vessel diameter, height of the agitator from the bottom of the vessel, height of liquid, dispersed phase hold-up, etc. It appears that the peripheral speed of the agitator could be used as a criterion for the scale-up. Values of the effective interfacial area were also obtained in a continuously operated reactor and it was found that under the similar operating conditions the values of effective interfacial area in a batch reactor were practically the same as in the continuous reactor. Some data are also reported for the over-all and true continuous phase mass transfer coefficients for physical extraction.