Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.39, No.5, 1132-1142, 2000
Characterization of an electrochemical pilot-plant filter-press reactor by hydrodynamic and mass transport studies
This work deals with the study of the influence of turbulence promoters in the hydrodynamic and mass transport behavior of a pilot-plant filter-press electrolyzer (a homemade UA200.08 with a 200 cm(2) electrode area) in an undivided configuration. A simple experimental arrangement was used to generate data from electrolytic conductivity measurements in a series of impulse-response experiments. The presence and type of turbulence promoters influence the flow distribution inside the reactor. A new design of a model (presented in a previous work) has been used to analyze the residence time distributions. In this study a new parameter, the turbulence factor, given as N(alpha)Phi(beta), was employed to classify the turbulence promoters. The optimization of the parameters indicates that the correct model is dispersed plug-flow behavior with a low axial dispersion that considers exchange between the dead and main zones of the reactor. It is also very interesting to highlight that the information obtained by means of the turbulence factors is similar to that obtained from the values of the mass transport coefficients measured using the limiting current technique.
Keywords:LABORATORY ELECTROLYZER;ENVIRONMENTAL TREATMENT;EFFICIENTSYNTHESIS;CELL;BEHAVIOR;FLOW;PERFORMANCE;DESIGN;DIFFUSION