Optimization of contraction-expansion partition in a two-stage internal airlift loop reactor

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Abstract Loop reactors are widely applied in industries because of good characteristics of gas-liquid interaction, and a series of internals are developed and equipped with the reactor to further reinforce the interaction. The installation of a contraction-expansion partition between two stages in a two-stage airlift loop reactor can effectively reduce the reversed liquid flow between the stages, while it increases the flow resistance. To pinpoint the effect of width and height of the partition on flow dynamics and obtain the partition which can reduce the flow resistance while decrease the reversed liquid flow, this study conducts an optimization of the partition utilizing CFD-PBM and multi-objective optimization methods. Firstly, a series of numerical simulation-based experiments with various partitions at three different superficial gas velocities are conducted to obtain the pressure drop and the reversed liquid flow in the two-stage loop reactor. It is found that the width and height of the partition as well as superficial gas velocities lead to different performance of flow dynamics. The width has a greater effect on pressure drop than the height at a low superficial gas velocity, while the effect of height on the pressure drop becomes larger as the superficial gas velocity increases and width is the determinant factor for the reversed liquid flow at all superficial gas velocities in the study. The correlations for pressure drop and the reversed liquid flow with the width and height of the partition are obtained by data fitting. The Pareto fronts for the structure of partition at various superficial gas velocities are obtained using multi-objective optimization with the pressure drop and the reversed liquid flow as the optimization objectives and the width and height of the partition as optimization parameters.

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	LU Zhe
	SHI Jiazhen
	GUO Kai
	LIU Chunjiang
	ZHENG Longyun

Keywords： contraction-expansion partition optimization two-stage airlift loop reactor gas-liquid flow computational fluid dynamics

Received 2022-02-05;

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LU Zhe, SHI Jiazhen, GUO Kai, LIU Chunjiang, ZHENG Longyun.Optimization of contraction-expansion partition in a two-stage internal airlift loop reactor[J] Chemcial Industry and Engineering, 2024,V41(1): 125-135

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