Gas recirculation rate and its influences on mass transfer in multiple impeller systems with various impeller combinations

Abstract

AbstractBoth the numerical and experimental approaches were used to study the effects of the gas recirculation and non‐uniform gas loading on the mass transfer rate for each impeller in a multiple impeller system. By combining the calculated gas velocity and local gas holdup, the gas recirculation rate around each impeller was estimated. The local mass transfer coefficients for systems equipped with various combinations of the Rushton turbine impeller (R) and pitched blade impeller (P) were determined by using the dynamic gassing out method. It is found that the Rushton turbine impeller has to be served as the lowest impeller in order to have a better gas dispersion and to give a higher overall KLa for a multiple impeller gas‐liquid contactor. The upper pitched blade impeller always enforces the circulating flow around the Rushton turbine impeller just beneath it and gives a higher overall average mass transfer rate. However, the system equipped with only the pitched blade impellers results in a much lower mass transfer rate than the other systems owing to the poor gas dispersion performance of the pitched blade impeller.