On the hydrodynamics of airlift reactors, Part I: Experiments

It is more and more possible to design bubbly flow reactors with methods of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD). However, measurements that can be used for model validation are often missing, especially for complex setups like airlift reactors. Such measurements include locally resolved information about the dispersed and continuous phase, particularly the flow field and interface structure. In the present work Reynolds stresses, liquid velocity and gas void fraction profiles as well as bubble size distributions are provided at several positions in the riser and the downcomer in a rectangular airlift reactor for this purpose. In addition, the hydrodynamics inside this airlift reactor are in detail described by the measured values.