Study of gas-liquid mass transfer enhancement of adsorbent particle in slurry bubble columns

The gas-liquid mass transfer in slurry systems with 4A molecular sieve/isopropanol-water and 4A molecular sieve/tert-butanol-water were investigated for studying the effect of fine adsorptive particles on gas-liquid mass transfer. A liquid back mixing mass transfer model was proposed and theoretically solved. Volumetric liquid mass transfer coefficients of isopropanol-water and tert-butanol-water were calculated based on the model. The calculated results of model accorded well with experiment results. The effects of solid concentration and particle size on enhancement factor were studied. The result showed that increase of solid concentration led to the increase of gas-liquid mass transfer, the maximum enhancement factor occurred at solid concentration 4%. The rate of enhancement fell with further increase of solid concentration. Smaller diameter particles was indicated for enhancing gas-liquid mass transfer as compared to larger diameter particles.