Bubble Columns Applications

Andrey Troshko, Franz Zdravistch, Heshmat Massah and Srinivasa

Mohan

Fluent Inc.

UGM 2003 Confidential 1

 Introduction
• Bubble columns consist of a gas sparged into a
column of liquid (usually from the bottom), resulting
in a very complex flow field, including bubble
coalescense and break up, inter-phase heat and
mass transfer and oscillatory plume behavior.
• Bubble columns are widely used in the chemical and
biochemical industries, like reactors and cell culture.
• The hydrodynamics of bubble columns are not yet
well understood and experimental data can be
difficult to obtain.
• Fluent simulations provide instant and averaged data
that can be used for bubble column design.

UGM 2003 Confidential 2

 Model Implementation
• Eulerian-Eulerian approach:
– Symmetric model for inter-phase exchange coefficients
– QUICK or First Order discretization for momentum and vof
equations
– Power Law for turbulence quantities.
– Mixture K-E turbulence model
• Time steps up 0.05 sec can be used in hex grids, up to 0.03
sec in hybrid stretched grids
• Running times are 5-10 hours in a single 1Ghz processor
for a 40K-70K cells mesh

Typical Hex Mesh

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 Hydrodynamics of Bubble Columns (1)
Diameter Gas vel Initial Final height (exp) Final height
(cm) (cm/s) Height (Fluent)

14 2.4 98 105 104

14 4.8 98 112 109
14 9.6 98 123 122
14 12.0 98 126 130

19 2.0 104 115 109

19 5.0 104 128 118
19 12.0 96 124 125

44 2.0 179 193 190

44 5.0 179 210 200

Experimental Matrix

UGM 2003 Confidential 4

 Hydrodynamics of Bubble Columns (2)

Overall gas hold up for various column Liquid velocity profile, 14 cm column.
diameters
Points are experimental
data.
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 Hydrodynamics of Bubble Columns (3)

Liquid velocity profile, 44 cm

column

Points are experimental data

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 Hydrodynamics of Bubble Columns (4)
• Dynamics of bubble column
– 44 cm bubble column
– 10 cm/sec gas superficial velocity
• Effects of discretization algorithm
were studied
– First order for vof and momentum
– QUICK for vof and momentum
• Horizontal liquid velocity history was
recorded at side point
Contours of Gas
Volume Fraction

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Hydrodynamics of Bubble Columns (5)
Onset of instabilities
Raw velocity signal

QUICK Upwind

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Hydrodynamics of Bubble Columns (6)
Power spectrum of velocity signal

QUICK Upwind
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Hydrodynamics of Bubble Columns (7)
Time averaged liquid velocity

QUICK Upwind

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 Conclusions
• Fluent 6 Eulerian multiphase capabilities are well
positioned to simulate the physics of bubble
column applications.
• Discretization scheme, grid quality and time step
have a strong influence on the accuracy and
solution speed
• Design information like has holdup, velocity
profiles and oscillation behavior can be obtained
in a few hours of cpu time.

UGM 2003 Confidential 11