Dynamics of the Gas-Liquid Suspended-solid Column

There are, in general, five types of three-phase slurry reactor studied in the literature  

No liquid flow-batch slurry reactor with no agitation  

Cocurrent gas-liquid-solid upflow reactor (sometimes referred to as a three-phase fluidized-bed reactor)  

Countercurrent (liquid, solid downflow, and gas upflow) flow reactor—three-phase spouted-bed reactor  

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Hydrodynamics of slurry reactors include the minimum gas velocity or power input to just suspend the particles (or to fully homogeneously suspend the particles), bubble dynamics and the holdup fractions of gas, solids and liquid phases. A complicating problem is the large variety in reactor types (sec Fig. I) and the fact that most correlations are of an empirical nature. We will therefore focus on sparged slurry columns and slurries in stirred vessels. 

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