Local gas holdup in a draft tube airlift bioreactor

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• 作者：Hu-Ping Luo ; Muthanna H. Al-Dahhan
• 关键词：Airlift bioreactors ; Hydrodynamics ; Multiphase flow ; Computed tomography ; Turbulence ; Gas holdup
• 刊名：Chemical Engineering Science
• 出版年：2010
• 出版时间：1 August 2010
• 年：2010
• 卷：65
• 期：15
• 页码：4503-4510
• 全文大小：1099 K

文摘

Airlift column bioreactors are gas–liquid contact devices characterized by a rising channel and a down flow channel due to gas holdup differences in these two channels. Local gas holdup distribution strongly affects the overall gas–liquid flow dynamics in airlift columns. In this work, local gas holdup distributions in a draft tube airlift column covering both bubbly flow and churn–turbulent flow regimes have been studied using computed tomography (CT) technique as well as conventional techniques. The radial and axial evolutions of the gas holdup distribution will be discussed, together with the effects of superficial gas velocity and geometry parameters. The obtained gas holdup results will also be used to verify various empirical and semi-empirical correlations in the literature. Moreover, the obtained gas holdup information, combined with liquid flow dynamic information reported in (Luo and Al-Dahhan, 2008a) and (Luo and Al-Dahhan, 2008b), forms a benchmark database for the design and scale-up of airlift column bioreactors and for computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modeling validations.