Assist. Prof. Andrej Bombač, PhD., University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering

Abstract:
This paper presents the distribution of the local void fraction (LVF) in a pilot bisectional bubble-column reactor with a diameter of 0.63 m, where the two-phase mixing of air and water was performed with a static mixer. Because of the lack of such data in the literature, the LVF was measured at 342 nodes in the vertical half-section plane of the column. Detecting the phases at a particular point with a resistivity probe and then a further phase-discrimination procedure using the probe signal enabled a quantitative evaluation of the reactor. Small differences between the volume-integrated LVF values and the gas-holdup measurements based on a liquid-height changes showed reasonably good agreement under all conditions.

Keywords:
bisectional bubble-column, resistivity probe, local void fraction, integral void fraction, gas holdup.