Studies of multiphase distribution and flow in bubble/ slurry bubble columns with /without internals and advanced sustainable construction materials using sophisticated measurement techniques

Bubble/slurry bubble columns have been widely studied and employed as multiphase flow reactors with and without vertical heat-exchanging tubes. In order to understand more deeply the effect of the dense internals on the hydrodynamics of bubble/slurry bubble column, systematic experiments were performed to visualize and quantify using the radioactive particle tracking (RPT) technique. A new methodology for implementing the radioactive particle tracking (RPT) technique has been developed to investigate the effect of the dense internals on the hydrodynamics of the bubble/slurry column reactor. Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) simulation has been implemented to simulate the system to generate a large number of calibration points to reconstruct the instantaneous positions of the radioactive particle using the similarity algorithm. The reliable data can help evaluate and validate the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models to predict the hydrodynamic parameters involved in bubble/slurry bubble column reactors. Moreover, a new hybrid measurement technique was developed and employed to study line-averaged three-phase holdup distribution in a Slurry Bubble Column Reactor (SBCR) using gamma-ray densitometry (GRD) and point optical fiber probe (OFP) techniques. The obtained results indicated that increasing the solids loading increased the solid holdup and decreased the liquid holdup. However, the gamma-ray computed tomography (γ-CT) technique has been employed to investigate the aggregate distribution/dispersion in self-consolidating concrete (SCC) as advanced sustainable construction materials and to evaluate the gamma-ray shielding properties of concrete in nuclear applications. --Abstract, page iv