Population balance simulation of gas–liquid contacting

A successful attempt to simulate turbulently flowing gas–liquid dispersions was undertaken in this work where the turbulent dispersion/coalescence of bubbles was accurately predicted over a wide range of operating conditions by incorporating the effect of virtual mass into the phenomenological model developed by Coulaloglou and Tavlarides [1977. Description of interaction processes in agitated liquid–liquid dispersions. Chemical Engineering Science, 32, 1289–1297] for liquid–liquid dispersions. The population balance equation was numerically solved and the results obtained were compared with the experimental data obtained from an intensified gas–liquid reactor/contactor in which screen-type static mixers were used to superimpose an adjustable uniformly distributed turbulence field on the nearly plug flow conditions encountered in high velocity pipe flows.The model was also found to be capable of predicting gas–liquid contacting for the case of industrial streams where the presence of amphiphilic constituents was found to retard coalescence and result in average interfacial areas as high as 2100 being achieved.The fact that the model was capable to match experimental results obtained under very demanding/extreme conditions (where the flowing dispersion is successively exposed to breakage-dominated and coalescence dominated regions with local energy dissipation ratios as high as 400) suggests that it may be used for simulating other more complex gas–liquid contacting conditions such as those encountered in MAT.