Flow pattern, contacting

Wettabihty is defined as the tendency of one fluid to spread on or adhere to a soHd surface (rock) in the presence of other immiscible fluids (5). As many as 50% of all sandstone reservoirs and 80% of all carbonate reservoirs are oil-wet (10). Strongly water-wet reservoirs are quite rare (11). Rock wettabihty can affect fluid injection rates, flow patterns of fluids within the reservoir, and oil displacement efficiency (11). Rock wettabihty can strongly affect its relative permeabihty to water and oil (5,12). When rock is water-wet, water occupies most of the small flow channels and is in contact with most of the rock surfaces as a film. Cmde oil does the same in oil-wet rock. Alteration of rock wettabihty by adsorption of polar materials, such as surfactants and corrosion inhibitors, or by the deposition of polar cmde oil components (13), can strongly alter the behavior of the rock (12). 

Flow Regimes in Multiphase Reactors. Reactant contacting, product separations, rates of mass and heat transport, and ultimately reaction conversion and product yields are strong functions of the gas and Hquid flow patterns within the reactors. The nomenclature of commonly observed flow patterns or flow regimes reflects observed flow characteristics, ie, armular, bubbly, plug, slug, spray, stratified, and wavy. 

This overall flow pattern in a distillation column provides countercurrent contacting of vapor and hquid streams on all the trays through the column. Vapor and liquid phases on a given tray approach thermal, pressure, and composition equilibriums to an extent dependent upon the efficiency of the contac ting tray. 

Reactor geometry - flow pattern and manner of contacting the phases... 

Figures 10-101, lO-lOJ, and 10-1 OK indicate the process flow patterns for single tube units and for multiple corrugated tubes in a single plain shell. These units are suitable for heating or cooling process fluids containing high pulp or fiber content or suspended particulates. The heat transfer coefficients are improved when compared to plain tubes as the turbulence improves the performance. The units can be arranged in multiple shells for parallel or series flow. The manufacturers should be contacted for details.

The purpose of the evaporator is to receive low-pressure, low-temperature fluid from the expansion valve and to bring it in close thermal contact with the load. The refrigerant takes up its latent heat from the load and leaves the evaporator as a drygas. Evaporators are classified according to their refrigerant flow pattern and their function. 

External jackets, 326-328 Helical coils, 312, 326, 327 Vertical coils, 326, 327 Mixing impellers, 290-297 Anchor, 290-329 Blending, 324, 326 Characteristic curves, 306 Chart to examine turbine applications, 296 Efficiency of propellers, 299 Flow of propellers. 298, 299 Flow patterns, 309-312 Gas-Liquid contacting, 324, 326 General list impellers, 291 Helical, 290, 329 Liquid-liquid dispersion, 326 Multiple, 297... 

Example 11.7 Carbon dioxide is sometimes removed from natural gas by reactive absorption in a tray column. The absorbent, typically an amine, is fed to the top of the column and gas is fed at the bottom. Liquid and gas flow patterns are similar to those in a distillation column with gas rising, liquid falling, and gas-liquid contacting occurring on the trays. Develop a model for a multitray CO2 scrubber assuming that individual trays behave as two-phase, stirred tank reactors. 

As mentioned in Section 11.3, fluidized-bed reactors are difficult to scale. One approach is to build a cold-flow model of the process. This is a unit in which the solids are fluidized to simulate the proposed plant, but at ambient temperature and with plain air as the fluidizing gas. The objective is to determine the gas and solid flow patterns. Experiments using both adsorbed and nonadsorbed tracers can be used in this determination. The nonadsorbed tracer determines the gas-phase residence time using the methods of Chapter 15. The adsorbed tracer also measures time spent on the solid surface, from which the contact time distribution can be estimated. See Section 15.4.2. 

Dixon and coworkers [25] have performed several CFD simulations of fixed beds with catalyst particles of different geometries (Figure 15.9). The vast number of surfaces and the problems with meshing the void fraction in a packed bed have made it necessary to limit the number of particles and use periodic boundary conditions to obtain a representative flow pattern. Hollow cylinders have a much higher contact area between the fluid and particles at the same pressure drop. However, with a random packing of the particles, there wiU be a large variation... 

The design of devices to promote cocurrent drop flows for heating or cooling a two-phase system, or for direct-contact heat transfer between two liquids, is difficult. The study by Wilke et al. (W7) is typical of the approach frequently used to analyze these processes. Wilke et al. described the direct-contact heat transfer between Aroclor (a heavy organic liquid) and seawater in a 3-in. pipe. No attempt was made to describe the flow pattern that existed in the system. The interfacial heat-transfer coefficient was defined by... 

The introduction of changes in the gas flow pattern of the unit could provide a means for improvement in both, single and two-reactor systems. It is important to keep in mind that in counter-current designs measures have to be taken to prevent hot spots within the reactor bed and to improve vapor-liquid contact. 

As its name implies, a tower reactor typically has a height-to-diameter (h/D) ratio considerably greater than 1. Types of tower or column reactors (the words tower and column may be used interchangeably) go by descriptive names, each of which indicates a particular feature, such as the means of creating gas-liquid contact or the way in which one phase is introduced or distributed. The flow pattern for one phase or for both phases may be close to ideal (PF or BMF), or may be highly nonideal. 

Ideal reactors have three ideal flow or contacting patterns. We show these in Fig. 2.1, and we very often try to make real reactors approach these ideals as closely as possible. 

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