Reactor configurations, hydrodynamic

It is always important to choose an optimum design configuration of the hydrodynamic cavitation reactor so as to maximize the cavitational effects and achieve cost effective operation. In this section, we will discuss available reactor configurations and give some guidelines, based on theoretical analysis coupled with experimental results, for selection of optimum design and operating parameters for hydrodynamic cavitation reactors. 

Guidelines for Selection of Hydrodynamic Cavitation Reactor Configurations... 

The discontinuous stirred tank reactor represents one of the most traditional reactor configurations for enzymatic reactions. It consists of a stirred tank where the enzyme, substrates, and cofactors are added at the beginning of the operation with no inlet and/or outlet stream during the reaction time. This type of reactor is usually considered to present an ideal hydrodynamic behavior therefore, the reactor is supposed to be completely mixed and the concentration of all... 

A systematic approach to the design of a reactor should start by discussing the field of velocity distributions. Much progress has been achieved in this area and the hydrodynamic characterization of a great variety of reactors is already known. For the sake of brevity, we will concentrate on two types of systems a perfectly mixed reaction space and a fully developed unidirectional flow in a tubular reactor. In practical terms this is not a serious limitation in computational fluid mechanics, commercially available calculating codes can be used to solve almost any other form of reactor configuration. 

Whenever the difiusional limitation is broken through the use of fine catalyst powder in a bubbling fluidized bed, a new limitation arises related to the hydrodynamics of the system. In the bubbling fluidized bed, it is not possible to fully exploit the very intrinsic kinetics of the powdered catalyst. Fast fluidization (transport) reactor configuration offers excellent potential to break this limitation. 

Previous workers have studied the influence of the ratio of the cross-section area of the downcomer to the riser [4,5], the reactor height [6,7], the gas-liquid separator configuration [8], and the distributor type and location [9]. All these affect the flow characteristics and mass transfer. Most previous works focus on global parameters, such as the liquid circulation velocity [10-13] and the average gas holdup in the riser [14-16]. Although much work has been carried out on EL-ALRs, the proper design and scale-up of an EL-ALR is still difficult because any variation in the physical properties of the gas or the liquid and the reactor structural feathers can have a considerable effect on the hydrodynamics... 

For ease of fabrication and modular construction, tubular reactors are widely used in continuous processes in the chemical processing industry. Therefore, shell-and-tube membrane reactors will be adopted as the basic model geometry in this chapter. In real production situations, however, more complex geometries and flow configurations are encountered which may require three-dimensional numerical simulation of the complicated physicochemical hydrodynamics. With the advent of more powerful computers and more efficient computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes, the solution to these complicated problems starts to become feasible. This is particularly true in view of the ongoing intensified interest in parallel computing as applied to CFD. 

The permeate is continuously withdrawn through the membrane from the feed sueam. The fluid velocity, pressure and species concentrations on both sides of the membrane and permeate flux are made complex by the reaction and the suction of the permeate stream and all of them depend on the position, design configurations and operating conditions in the membrane reactor. In other words, the Navier-Stokes equations, the convective diffusion equations of species and the reaction kinetics equations are coupled. The transport equations are usually coupled through the concentration-dependent membrane flux and species concentration gradients at the membrane wall. As shown in Chapter 10, for all the available membrane reactor models, the hydrodynamics is assumed to follow prescribed velocity and sometimes pressure drop equations. This makes the species transport and kinetics equations decoupled and renders the solution of... 

At the heart of these processes is the absorber or the reactor of a particular configuration best suited to the chemical absorption or reaction being carried out. Its selection, design, sizing, and performance depend on the hydrodynamics and axial dispersion, mass and heat transfer, and reaction kinetics. 

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