HYDRODYNAMICS OF LIQUID FLUIDIZED-BEDS INCLUDING THE DISTRIBUTOR REGION

An important application of liquid-solid fluidized beds has been developed recently in biotechnology, namely, immobilized biocatalyst bioreactors. For this application, experiments have been carried out to investigate the effect of distributor-induced flow nonuniformities on the hydrodynamics of liquid fluidized beds. The influence of important variables associated with the design of distributors has been studied including the effect of the density of the solid particles on the distributor region flow behavior. In the presence of the low-density particles (rho(s) = 1.61 g/cm3), the influence of the distributor region was quite significant whereas, for high-density particles (rho(s) = 2.46 g/cm3), it was negligible. A new model has been proposed which accounts for the stirring effects of the high-velocity orifice jets in the distributor region.