Local liquid distribution in trickle bed reactors


Vivek V. Buwa

Advanced Flow Characterization

Local liquid distribution in trickle bed reactors

Packed bed reactors are widely used chemical and petrochemical industries. Their performance, especially that of the three-phase packed bed reactors e.g. trickle bed reactors (TBRs), has an immense economic impact due to their use in the oil industry for various hydrotreating, hydrocracking and hydrodesulphurization processes. Owing to complex nature of flow in TBRs, measurements of local liquid volume fraction distribution are rather limited, yet crucial for the scientific world. We work on the studies related to liquid distribution in the bed. The quantitative measurements of the local liquid hold-up generated by different configurations of gas-liquid distributors is carried out using in-house fabricated voidage probes. Also, the phase distribution study is carried out using Electrical resistance tomography and liquid collection method for cylindrical bed, and photographic technique for pseudo-2D bed. This study is useful to capture instantaneous local and spatial liquid hold-up fluctuations under different flow regimes and will help to understand the dynamics of gas-liquid flow in packed beds. The experimentally verified CFD models are also being developed and used on the same lines to optimize the performance of TBRs.

Publications/conference presentations:

· Arpit Jindal and Vivek V. Buwa, 2017, “Effect of Bed Characteristics on Local Liquid Spreading in a Trickle Bed”, AIChE Journal, 63(1), 347-357.

· Ekta Jain, Brajesh K. Singh and Vivek V. Buwa, “Measurements of Liquid Volume Fraction Distribution in a Packed Bed using Electrical Resistance Tomography and Voidage Probes”, 2017, submitted to CES

· Ekta Jain, Brajesh K. Singh and Vivek V. Buwa, “Measurements of Local Liquid Volume Fraction Distribution and Flow Structures in a Trickle Bed using Electrical Resistance Tomography and Voidage Probes”, Accepted for presentation at 13th International Conference on Gas-Liquid and Gas-Liquid-Solid Reaction Engineering (GLS 13) to be held at Brussels (Belgium), 20-23 August 2017.

· David Immanuel Arthur Dhanraj and Vivek V. Buwa, 2017, “Local Liquid Distribution in Trickle Beds: ERT Measurements and CFD Simulations”, Accepted for presentation at 13th International Conference on Gas-Liquid and Gas-Liquid-Solid Reaction Engineering (GLS 13) to be held at Brussels (Belgium), 20-23 August 2017.

· Ekta Jain, Madhusudan Sau and Vivek V. Buwa, 2017, "Gas-liquid Flow through Chimney and Bubble-cap Distributors", Accepted for presentation at 13th International Conference on Gas-Liquid and Gas-Liquid-Solid Reaction Engineering (GLS 13) to be held at Brussels (Belgium), 20-23 August 2017.

· Brajesh K. Singh, Ekta Jain, and Vivek V. Buwa, “Spatial- and Time-resolved Measurements of Liquid Hold-up Distribution in a Packed Bed using Electrical Resistance Tomography and Voidage-Probes”, Presented at 9^th International Conference on Multiphase Flow (ICMF 2016), Florence (Italy), 22-27 May 2016.

· Arpit Jindal and Vivek V. Buwa, 2016, “Eulerian Multi-fluid Simulations of Local Liquid Spreading in a Trickle Bed”, Presented at 9^th International Conference on Multiphase Flow (ICMF 2016), Florence (Italy), 22-27 May 2016.

· David Immanuel Arthur Dhanraj and Vivek V. Buwa, 2016, “Numerical simulations of local liquid distribution in a trickle bed”, Presented at Chemical Engineering Congress (CHEMCON 2016), Chennai (India), 27-30 December 2016.

· Arpit Jindal and Vivek V. Buwa, 2015, "Numerical Simulation and Experimental Analysis of Gas-Liquid Flow Through Trickle Bed", Presented at Chemical Engineering Congress (CHEMCON 2015), Guwahati (India), 27-30 December 2015.