Influence of Solid Phase and Geometry on Liquid Velocity of a Three-Phase Bubble Column Fluid Dynamic

Multiphase flows have a large applicability in the industry and its studies are very important. One example of three-phase system is bubble columns operating with solid phase as catalyst in the process. In this context the hydrocracking systems are used to process heavy oil and are becoming very common at oil refineries. Its operation is done in multiple-stage each one in a different reactor. In this work, it is proposed a new geometry of bubble columns in which two different solid phases can be used as catalyst. There are two techniques used in this work: Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) in which it is possible to measure velocity fields inside the columns without interfering with the flow; and Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) that allows to predict numerically the flow and compare with experimental results. In the experiments it was used Rhodamine B is a tracer for the liquid phase and the PIV is extended to the Stereo-PIV using two CCDs cameras that allows estimating the third component velocity. The liquid phase is water at 22 °C, the solid phase is FCC catalyst with diameter of 100-125 µm and air as gas phase is air injected at the bottom with 5 different flow rate between 1.5 and 10 l/min. The solid load is 4.2x10^-4. The comparison of the different gas rate with solid concentration fixed is presented and discussed. Two gas rate were compared with CFD cases using the modelling of previous works and the data agreed satisfactorily.