Autori: Mugurel C. Munteanu, Ion Iliuta , Faïçal Larachi

Editorial: Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 44 (25), p.9384 - 939, 2005.

Rezumat:

Powerful superconducting magnets constitute adequate proxies for generating artificial gravity environments in earthbound experimentations. The application of microgravity or macrogravity conditions could be interesting for the pharmaceutical and medical domains for discovering and identifying new drugs and their actions. In the chemical engineering area, strong inhomogeneous magnetic fields could potentially open up attractive applications. For example, in multiphase catalytic systems, a number of factors must be optimized for improving process efficiency. Preliminary experimentations and model calculations reveal that inhomogeneous and strong magnetic fields, applied to such systems as mini trickle-bed reactors, are capable of affecting reactor hydrodynamics which can be taken advantage of for improving process performance. Pressure drops, liquid holdups and wetting efficiency experimental data have been obtained for two-phase downward gas-liquid trickle beds in the presence of inhomogeneous magnetic fields. Magnetic field effects on trickle bed hydrodynamic properties have been explained using the gravitational amplification factor which commutes the Kelvin body force density into an artificial gravitational body force.

Cuvinte cheie: Inhomogeneous magnetic field, trickle bed reactor, pressure drop, liquid holdup, wetting efficiency

URL: http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/article.cgi/iecred/2005/44/i25/pdf/ie050195p.pdf