Experimental characterization of slurry bubble-column reactor hydrodynamics

Sandia`s program to develop, implement, and apply diagnostics for hydrodynamic characterization of slurry bubble column reactors (SBCRs) at industrially relevant conditions is discussed. Gas liquid flow experiments are performed on an industrial scale. Gamma densitometry tomography (GDT) is applied to measure radial variations in gas holdup at one axial location. Differential pressure (DP) measurements are used to calculate volume averaged gas holdups along the axis of the vessel. The holdups obtained from DP show negligible axial variation for water but significant variations for oil, suggesting that the air water flow is fully developed (minimal flow variations in the axial direction) but that the air oil flow is still developing at the GDT measurement location. The GDT and DP gas holdup results are in good agreement for the air water flow but not for the air oil flow. Strong flow variations in the axial direction may be impacting the accuracy of one or both of these techniques. DP measurements are also acquired at high sampling frequencies (250 Hz) and are interpreted using statistical analyses to determine the physical mechanism producing each frequency component in the flow. This approach did not yield the information needed to determine the flow regime in these experiments. As a first step toward three phase material distribution measurements, electrical impedance tomography (EIT) and GDT are applied to a liquid solid flow to measure solids holdup. Good agreement is observed between both techniques and known values