Gas-liquid mixing, in agitated reactors

In an airlift fermenter, mixing is accomplished without any mechanical agitation. An airlift fermenter is used for tissue culture, because the tissues are shear sensitive and normal mixing is not possible. With the airlift, because the shear levels are significantly lower than in stirred vessels, it is suitable for tissue culture. The gas is sparged only up to the part of the vessel cross section called the riser. Gas is held up, fluid density decreases causing liquid in the riser to move upwards and the bubble-free liquid to circulate through the down-comer. The liquid circulates in airlift reactors as a result of the density difference between riser and down-comer. 

Topics that acquire special importance on the industrial scale are the quality of mixing in tanks and the residence time distribution in vessels where plug flow may be the goal. The information about agitation in tanks described for gas/liquid and slurry reactions is largely apphcable here. The relation between heat transfer and agitation also is discussed elsewhere in this Handbook. Residence time distribution is covered at length under Reactor Efficiency. A special case is that of laminar and related flow distributions characteristic of non-Newtonian fluids, which often occiu s in polymerization reactors. 

If the process is continuous and in the complete mixed-flow mode, for both the gas and slurry phases, the equations derived for agitated sluny reactors are valid (see Section 3.5.1) (Ramachandran and Chaudhari, 1980) by simply applying the appropriate mass transfer coefficients. Note that in sluiiy-agitated reactors, the material balances are based on the volume of the bubble-free liquid. Furthermore, in reactions of the form aA(g) + B(l) — products, if gas phase concentration of A is constant, the same treatment holds for the plug flow of the gas phase. 

The agitated cell reactor consists of two chambers, one for the liquid phase and another for the gas-phase, which can both be independently mixed by two mixers. In this reactor the mass-transfer area can be varied independently of the gas flow rate by installing various porous plates with a defined number of holes, i. e. a defined contact area gas-liquid, between the two chambers. The value of kL can then be determined from the measurement of kLa. 

As in Example 4.3 with an agitated tank, let the fraction of chlorine passing through the reactor unreacted be / and, because CI2 is replaced by HCI, / is also the mole fraction of chlorine in the off-gas. Since the total pressure is 1 bar, the partial pressure of the chlorine will be fu bar. Because the gas phase in the reactor is assumed to be well mixed, the equivalent interfacial chlorine concentration Ca, is fJStS, i.e. /u/0.45 = 2.22/ kmol/m3. Considering unit volume, i.e. 1 m3 of dispersion, and following equation 4.17, the rate of mass transfer across the interface is now equated to the rate of the reaction in the bulk of the liquid where the concentration of the chlorine is Qnt ... 

Mechanically agitated gas-liquid reactors are widely used in laboratories, although their use in large-scale operations is somewhat limited due to the required energy cost of mixing. Large-scale operations are possible in the production of fine chemicals, pharmaceutical products, or high-priced chemicals. 

The liquid-phase mixing in a multistage mechanically agitated reactor is best correlated by Eq. (2.31) in the absence of gas flow and by Eq. (2.32) in the presence of gas flow. The mixing time can be estimated from the study of Paca et al. (1976). Experimental work is needed to estimate gas-phase back-mixing. The use of Eq. (2.36) for the calculation of the gas-liquid volumetric mass transfer coefficient in a multistage mechanically agitated column is recommended. 

In previous sections, we examined the design parameters for gas-liquid, gas-solid, liquid-liquid, gas-liquid-solid, biological polymerization, and special types of mechanically agitated reactors. In this section we present a brief review on available techniques for the measurement of various mixing and transport parameters for a mechanically agitated vessel. Both physical and chemical techniques are examined. 

The pulsating three-phase reactor has been examined only at the laboratory level. The pulsation gives good mixing and l)eat- and mass-transfer characteristics in the column. The first three types of gas-liquid-suspended-solid reactor are the most commonly used in practice. Schematic diagrams for these reactors are shown in Fig. l-3fn), (b), and (c), respectively. The agitated and nonagitated slurry... 

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