Three-phase catalytic-bed reactors, such as slurry bubble column reactors, agitated slurry reactors, single or multitubular fixed-bed reactors and microchannel or multichannel reactors, are widely used in chemical, petrochemical, and biological engineering applications. The design, modeling, scaleup and optimization of these reactors require, among others, precise knowledge of the hydrodynamics (gas-liquid-solid holdups, pressure drop, catalyst axial and redial profiles), intrinsic reaction kinetics (reaction rate constants, orders of the chemical reactions, and enthalpy of the reaction), and heat as well mass transfer parameters (volumetric gas-liquid and liquid-solid mass and heat transfer coefficients).<br/>The intrinsic kinetics of the chemical reaction should be measured in a laboratory-scale (short fixed-bed or well-mixed agitated autoclave) operating under well-controlled conditions where only the resistance to the reaction kinetics is controlling. For engineering applications, however, unless the chemical reaction in question is kinetically-controlled, the increase of the reactor size beyond that used in measuring the reaction kinetics, allow the resistances to mass transfer become important and neglecting it will lead to inaccurate and false modeling predictions. In this talk, a stepwise procedure for the design, modeling, scaleup and optimization of a slurry bubble column reactor for the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis will be introduced. Empirical modeling of a pilot-scale and commercial-scale slurry bubble column reactors with different tailgas recycling options will be will be discussed. Also, 3-D multiphase-Eulerian Computinal Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling of a conceptual large-scale slurry bubble column reactor will be presented.

It is not the catalyst-- it is the reactor!

2019 Spring National Meeting

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