Mixing in a co-current upflow bubble column reactors with and without internals

The application of the bubble-column include internals, like flows in the context of power generation using nuclear reactors. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for mixing and RTD in a continuous bubble column (with and without internals) were performed by using OpenFOAM 2.3.1. The superficial gas velocities were 0.014, 0.088, and 0.221 m/s and the superficial liquid velocities were 0.005 and 0.014 m/s. The simulations were conducted for three different configurations of the bubble column, including an open bubble column, a column with one vertical central rod of 36 mm diameter, and a column with the same central rod and four vertical additional rods of 12 mm diameter. The effects of superficial gas and liquid velocities and column internals were investigated on liquid phase mixing and the axial dispersion coefficient. Comparisons have been made between the experimental measurements and the CFD simulations.