Estimation of trickle-to-pulse flow regime transition and pressure drop in high-pressure trickle bed reactors with organic liquids

The pressure drop over the reactor bed is increasing with increasing operating pressure and gas/liquid throughputs. The pressure drop results obtained with hydrogen at higher operation pressures match reasonably well the results obtained with air-water at atmospheric pressure. This comparison is made using a new developed pressure drop correlation and illustrates the influence of increased gas density (high operating pressure effect). The Trickle Bed Simulator of University Laval [F. Larachi, B. Grandjean, I. Iliuta, Z. Bensetiti, A. André, G. Wild, M. Chen, Excel Worksheet Simulator for Trickle-Bed Reactors, http://www.gch.ulaval.ca/bgrandjean/pbrsimul/pbrsimul.html, 1999] was found to match reasonably well our pilot plant measured values for low and high operating pressures.