FLOW AND MIXING CHARACTERISTICS OF JET-FLOW REACTOR

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

A novel jet-flow reactor is designed, fabricated and tested for carrying out gas-liquid reactions. As all reactions between gas and Liquid are categorized as instantaneous, fast or slow and the mass transfer is also playing prominent role, it is necessary to carry out study on kinetics of reaction, mixing characteristics and mass transfer characteristic of the reactor. Jet flow reactor being novel, its characteristics related to the mixing and mass transfer are taken up for study separately. This paper deals with study of flow and mixing in this Novel equipment i.e., Jet-flow reactor. Therefore, it undertakes the study of mixing characteristic in the reactor. Mixing characteristics can be better studied with fluid which is transparent and using tracer which are visible in this transparent fluid and are easily dragged or flown by the fluid under test. Thus, taking known volume of water and specially designed tracer like spike type tracer, water balls and poly-vinyl chloride (PVC) grains, are chosen to observe the axial flow as well as radial flow. To begin with, after completing Hydraulic and pneumatic test of the vessel, the study is carried out with known amount of liquid and known flow of gas. The movement of liquid, both in radial as well as axial direction, is observed by reflection of LED light focused from top on tracer particle. This manual observation by naked eye and photographs and videography reveal the flow pattern. The flow pattern is reproduced in the form of schematic diagram to better understand the flow behavior. Having completed this study, qualitatively, further study is carried out for quantitative analysis using chemical system which can be analyzed by simple chemical methods. Thus, NaOH-CO2 system is chosen and the mixing characteristics is checked. Both the observations, flow pattern and mixing are recorded.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.