Trickle flow hydrodynamic multiplicity

Abstract

Trickle flow is encountered in a variety of process engineering applications where gas and liquid flow through a packed bed of stationary solid. Owing to the complexities of three interacting phases, a fundamentally exhaustive description of trickle flow hydrodynamics has not been achieved. A complicating factor in describing the hydrodynamics is the fact that the hydrodynamic state is dependent not only on the present operating conditions but also on their entire history, including fluid flow rate changes and pre-wetting procedures. This phenomenon is termed hydrodynamic multiplicity and is the subject of this work. Hydrodynamic multiplicity greatly complicates both the experimental investigation into the behaviour of a trickle flow column and the theoretical modelling of the observed behaviour. Broadly speaking, this study addresses hydrodynamic multiplicity on three levels. First, a conceptual framework is proposed that can be used to study hydrodynamic multiplicity with limited resources. It is based on the absolute limiting values that the hydrodynamic parameters can adopt for a certain set of conditions, and encompasses both flow rate hysteresis loops and pre-wetting procedures. There are 5 such hydrodynamic modes. When the existing literature is critically evaluated in light of this framework, it is established that the reported experimental studies have not addressed all the issues. Previous modelling attempts are also shown to be unable to qualitative explain all the existing data. Moreover, authors have suggested different (and often contradictory) physical mechanisms responsible for hydrodynamic multiplicity. Secondly, an experimental investigation intended to supplement the existing literature and illustrate the utility of the proposed framework is launched. This includes bed-scale measurements of liquid holdup, pressure drop and gas-liquid mass transfer for a variety of conditions including different flow rates, pressures, particle shapes, particle porosity and surface tension. The second part of the experimental effort uses radiography and tomography in new ways to visualise the temporal and spatial characteristics of the different hydrodynamic modes. The tomographic investigation incorporates advanced image processing techniques in order to culminate in a pore-level evaluation of the hydrodynamic modes that reveals additional features of hydrodynamic multiplicity. Thirdly, the experimental insights are condensed into a set of characteristic trends that highlight the features of hydrodynamic multiplicity. A pore-level capillary mechanism is then introduced to qualitatively explain the observed behaviour. The mechanism shows how the differences in advancing and receding contact angles and the characteristics of the packed structure (or pore geometries) are ultimately responsible for the observed hydrodynamic multiplicity behaviour. Lastly, the effect of hydrodynamic multiplicity on trickle bed reactor performance is discussed. It is established experimentally that depending on the reaction conditions, different modes yield optimal performance. The idea of optimizing the performance by manipulating the hydrodynamic state is introduced. In totality, this work advances the understanding of trickle flow hydrodynamics in general and hydrodynamic multiplicity in particular.