Insight into the effect of particle density and size on the hydrodynamics of a particular slurry bubble column reactor by CFD-PBM approach

Abstract

The present work numerically investigated the effect of catalyst properties on the hydrodynamics of a pilot-scale slurry bubble column reactor with circular sparger and helical heat exchangers by employing the CFD-PBM modeling. Strong dependency on particle size (dp) were observed when dp>75 μm. With the particle size increased, the axial concentration gradient of gas holdup and solid holdup gradually increased, which were not conducive to heat and mass transfer. When dp was in the range of 10–75 μm, the gas holdup increased with increasing the particle size, which is beneficial to the momentum transfer in the bed. The variation of particle density (ρp) had insignificant effect on the overall gas holdup distribution, though the solid holdup increased obviously in the sparger region with ρp increased. This work provides reminding to search for the optimal operating conditions and gives reliable guidelines to prepare high-efficiency catalysts in the synthesis process.