MRI Flow Imaging of Trickle Bed Reactors

MRI Flow Imaging of Trickle Bed Reactors
1st supervisor and 1st promotor: Prof. Hans Kuipers
2nd supervisor and co-promotor: Assistant Prof. Kay Buist
Affiliation: Eindhoven University of Technology
Research theme: Smart Biomass Conversion

Fischer-Tropsch processes are currently performed in bubble slurry reactors or trickle bed reactors. Although trickle bed reactors have a smaller degree of back mixing and as a result higher chemical conversion, this technology was developed much later than bubble slurry column reactors. The main reason is the difficulty to design and scale-up these reactors, because they are governed by the particle-scale phenomena.

In this project, the two-phase flow in a trickle bed reactor will be studied with MRI. The use of MRI will allow visualization of the flow field and obtain quantitative data on the particle-scale phenomena like the liquid and gas distribution. This project will have a close collaboration with the numerical modelling project.

Keywords:

• Trickle bed reactors
• Multiphase flow
• MRI
• Heat and mass transfer
• Experiments