(510a) Pressure Drop and Hydrodynamics of Trickle-Bed Reactors with Particle Size Distributions

Trickle-bed reactors are typified by cocurrent downflow of gaseous and liquid reactants over a packed bed of catalyst.  Industrial applications of trickle-bed reactors include hydrogenation, hydrodesulurfization, and selective oxidation reactions.  While the characterization of trickle-bed reactors has been well reported in the literature, correlations describing hydrodynamic parameters such as pressure drop and wetting efficiency are limited to systems with uniform particle size.  Although prevalent in practice, packed beds with activated carbon or other systems with particle size distributions have not been thoroughly investigated.  Towards this end, a trickle-bed reactor using a number of particle sizes and size distributions has been utilized to develop correlations for pressure drop, liquid holdup, and wetting efficiency.  The effect of particle size and size distributions, in addition to other reactor variables (gas and liquid mass flux, viscosity, etc), on each parameter  will be presented.  The establishment of correlations for these important hydrodynamic parameters, particularly with respect to packed beds having particle size distributions, provides fundamental understanding as well as practical insight into the behavior of trickle-bed reactors.