Onset of pulsing in gas–liquid trickle bed filtration

Abstract

When liquid suspensions containing low concentration of fine solids are treated in catalytic packed bed gas–liquid–solid reactors, which are operated in trickle flow or near the transition between trickle and pulse flow, plugging develops and increases the resistance to two-phase flow. Also due to obstruction, such accumulation of fines in the catalyst bed shifts progressively the flow pattern from trickling to pulsing flow. The progressive onset of pulsing flow along the packed bed was estimated using a sequential approach based on combining a “large time-scale” unsteady-state filtration solution of two-phase flow with a “short time-scale” solution of a linear stability analysis of two-phase flow. Space–time evolution and two-phase flow of the deposition of fines in trickle bed reactors under trickle flow regime was described using a one-dimensional two-fluid model based on the volume-average mass and momentum balance equations and volume-average species balance equation for the fines. The model hypothesized that plugging occurred via deep-bed filtration and incorporated physical effects of porosity and effective specific surface area changes due to the capture of fines, inertial effects of phases, and coupling effects between the fines filter rate equation and the interfacial momentum exchange force terms. The transition between trickle flow and pulse flow regimes was described from a stability analysis of the solution of the transient two-fluid model around an equilibrium state of trickle flow under pseudo steady state conditions. The impact of liquid superficial velocity, viscosity and surface tension, gas superficial velocity and density, feed fines concentration, and fines diameter on the transition between trickle and pulse flows in the presence of fines deposition was analyzed.