Three-Dimensional Simulation on Liquid Flow in a Rotating Packed Bed Reactor

Journal article, 2017

Rotating packed bed (RPB) reactors, with strong centrifugal acceleration up to several hundred times gravitational acceleration, can greatly intensify the gas-liquid mass transfer efficiency. With the improvement of high performance computer clusters and simulation models, a more precise and comprehensive simulation on the gas-liquid flows in RPBs has been achieved by a three-dimensional model. The volume of fluid (VOF) multiphase model, sliding model (SM), and different turbulence models were used to compute the velocity fields and capture the evolution of the gas-liquid interface in the RPB reactor. The liquid flow behavior, droplet size, liquid phase distribution, specific surface area, and mean residence time (MRT) of the liquid phase within the RPB were studied. Compared with two-dimensional simulations, the three-dimensional simulation model can not only describe the liquid breakage and coalescence processes within RPB reactors more clearly, but also obtain results in more satisfactory agreement with experimental data.