Temperature profiles of a direct contact heat transfer in a slurry bubble column

Slurry bubble columns (SBCs) are used industrially in various applications because of their advantages. In spite of the simple construction of the SBCs, their scale-up analyses are complex due to the effect of various parameters on the hydrodynamic and heat transfer rates in these columns. In SBCs, Direct Contact Heat Transfer (DCHT) includes a highly complicated process of the gas flow through the slurry. In this paper, the slurry and gas temperature profiles of the DCHT process in a SBC with a high temperature gas, is investigated by using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The case study that is examined in this paper, is injecting a helium gas at 363 K through a slurry of water liquid and alumina solid particles at 295 K. The CFD simulations of the temperature distributions are performed for churn-turbulent flow regime only. In this paper, different factors that can affect the temperature profiles of the slurry and gas are studied, such as: the superficial gas velocity (Ugs), static liquid height (H), and solid particles concentration (CS). From the results of this paper, it is found that the average slurry temperature decreases by decreasing Ugs and increases by decreasing H and/or CS at any given Ugs. In addition, it is noted that the decrease rate of the slurry temperature with increasing the solid concentration is insignificant. The results also show that the gas temperature decreases significantly near the bottom of the column, and the effects of Ugs, H and CS on gas temperature are negligible. (c) 2022 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the slurry and gas temperature profiles of the Direct Contact Heat Transfer (DCHT) process in a Slurry Bubble Column (SBC) with a high temperature gas using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The study focuses on the effects of superficial gas velocity, static liquid height, and solid particle concentration on the temperature distribution. The results show that the slurry temperature decreases with decreasing gas velocity and increases with decreasing liquid height and/or solid particle concentration.