Mass transfer and hydrodynamic characteristics of a high aspect ratio self-ingesting reactor for gas–liquid operations

Abstract

The mass transfer performance of a gas–liquid self-ingesting stirred reactor is reported both for coalescing and non-coalescing systems. The vessel features are a high aspect ratio and a rather narrow multiple-impeller draft tube, through which the gas phase is ingested and led down to the vessel bottom, where it is finely dispersed into the liquid rising in the annular portion of the vessel. Comparison is made between k L a values determined by several variants of the dynamic method, among which pure oxygen absorption in a previously de-gassed liquid phase. Results show that the gas–liquid mass transfer coefficient values obtained with the last approach are remarkably larger than those measured with all other techniques in which nitrogen is initially dissolved in the liquid phase. Possible reasons behind this discrepancy are discussed. The gas–liquid mass transfer performance of the investigated gas inducing contactor is finally compared with literature data on other self-inducing/ingesting devices. Comparison results encourage further development of the investigated apparatus.