Nt1310 Unit 3 Lab Report Material

From an industrial point of view, the uniform distribution (i.e., the gas distributed homogeneously over the entire cross-sectional area of the column) is essential to achieve optimal reactor performance. For instance, high quality and efficiency of the chemical reaction can only be achieved through homogenous gas holdup distribution along liquid phase as in bubble column or slurry phase (liquid-catalyst) in a slurry bubble column due to this homogenous gas holdup distribution lead to better interaction between phase, which is necessary for the chemical reaction. In contrast, the nonhomogeneous gas holdup distribution over the entire cross-sectional area of column causes poor contact between other phases (liquid or slurry phases), which leads to accelerating the reaction in some regions while slow in other regions of the reactor and consequently affect the performance of the reactor.
Such these results confirm the findings that obtained recently by Kagumba and Al Mesfer where they reported that at churn turbulent flow regime, the gas holdup that was achieved in bubble column in the absence of vertical internals could be extrapolated to the columns with vertical internals when these columns with internals are operated at the same superficial gas velocity but calculated based on the free cross-sectional area for the flow. This is interesting finding due to they achieved this observation in 6-inch bubble columns while in this work the same observation can also be obtained in 18-inch bubble