Modeling gas holdup in a multiphase oxygen slurry bubble column reactor for Cu-Cl hydrogen production using CFD

The hydrodynamics of the oxygen bubble column reactor is investigated numerically using CFD analyses to predict the values of the gas holdup using Eulerian model and k - epsilon turbulence method. It is shown that, at any given static liquid height and solid concentration, increasing the superficial gas velocity leads to a higher gas holdup. Also, the gas holdup reduces when the static liquid height increases and/or the solid concentration increases at any given superficial gas velocity. All gas holdup findings were verified by experimental results from prior literature, showing excellent agreement and validating the models' applicability to this kind of a slurry bubble column system. Profiles of gas holdup obtained from CFD simulations were shown to generally under-predict the experimental data. Also, it is shown that CFD models accurately anticipated the experimental effects of the superficial gas velocity, static liquid height, and solid concentration on gas holdup.