Process design liquid/solid mixing

Gas-liquid bubble columns and gas-liquid-solid slurry bubble columns are widely used in the chemical and petrochemical industries for processes such as methanol synthesis, coal liquefaction, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis and separation methods such as solvent extraction and particle/gas flotation. The hydrodynamic behavior of gas-liquid bubble columns and gas-liquid-solid slurry bubble columns are of great importance for the design and scale-up of reactors. Although the hydrodynamics of the bubble and slurry bubble columns has been a subject of intensive research through experiments and computations, the flow structure quantification of complex multi-phase flows are still not well understood, especially in the three-dimensional region. In bubble and slurry bubble columns, the presence of gas bubbles plays an important role to induce appreciable liquid/solids mixing as well as mass transfer. The flows within these systems are divided into two... 

The above-described mixers are essentially low-viscosity devices. In many operations where the viscosity is high, when dealing with concentrated multiphase gas-liquid-solid binary or tertiary systems, or when liquid-to-solid phase transformation occurs during mixing, novel equipment designs are needed to intensify the heat/mass transfer processes. The multiphase fluids also represent an important class of materials that have microstructure developed during processing and subsequently frozen-in, ready for use as a product. To deliver certain desired functions, the control of microstructure in the product is important. This microstructure is developed in most cases by the interaction between the fluid flow and the fluid microstructure hence, uniformity of the flow field is important. 

Key Process Questions for Solid-Liquid Mixing. For each mixing operation, several key process-related issues must be addressed before scale-up and design. For solid-liquid mixing operations, key process questions include the following. 

---