Chemical Engineering Science, Vol.51, No.10, 2079-2088, 1996
Complex Gas - Liquid Reactions - Feedback from Bulk Liquid to Liquid - Side Film
The extensive literature on gas-liquid reactions has, with a few exceptions. been devoted to reactions that ate considered to be completed entirely in liquid film or bulk liquid for the sake of simplification of modeling and design A different perspective for modeling of gas-liquid reactors is provided here considering multiple (series-parallel) reactions occurring over the entire liquid phase, with at least one species participating in the reaction scheme being volatile. The two-way linkages between liquid film and bulk liquid are properly accounted for in the present approach. The dispositions of concentration profiles for reactant and product species in the liquid film are presented and discussed for a perfectly mixed reactor. The implications of these dispositions on parameters such as augmentation and enhancement factors and distribution of the extent of a reaction between liquid film and bulk liquid are discussed. Expressions for species concentrations in different portions of the two phases are obtained analytically for linear kinetics. Numerical illustrations demonstrate that an unwarranted confinement of liquid phase reactions to either liquid film or bulk liquid can lead to incorrect design of and erroneous prediction of performance of gas-liquid reactors. Variation in relative importance of reactions in liquid film with respect to reactions in bulk liquid with variations in process parameters and effectiveness of the reactions in the presence of mass transfer resistances are also examined.