Bubbling to turbulent regime transition in a 2D catalytic fluidized bed reactor

Abstract

The ozone decomposition reaction was performed in a 2.5cmx40cmx450cm two dimensional (2D) catalytic fluidized bed reactor. Commercial FCC catalyst impregnated with Fe2O3 was used at superficial gas velocities ranging between 0.006 m/s and 0.55 m/s. The onset velocity of the turbulent regime (uc) was determined as 0.4 m/s. The catalyst activity was optimized so that the effect of inter-phase mass transfer could be accentuated in the conversion reading. It was found that the general bubbling-turbulent model of Thompson et. al. (1999) combined with the mass transfer correlations of Kunii and Levenspiel (1991), Foka et. al. (1996) and Miyauchi et. al. (1980)gave reasonable predictions of the experimental data. The gradual improvement of reactor performance with an increase in superficial velocity (as predicted by the Thompson et. al. model) was not observed; instead a discontinuity of the reactor performance was noted in the vicinity of uc. More experimental work is required to substantiate this observation. Copyright