Vito Specchia

Catalyst areas wetted by flowing and semistagnant liquid in trickle-bed reactors

Abstract Comparison of different experimental techniques has shown that the best evaluation of the wetted areas of a catalyst is obtainable by a tracer method. The static areas may be evaluated from the static hold-up values as determined by fitting the liquid RTDF with the PE model. The importance of the “quality” of wetting on the conversion rate in trickle-bed reactors is also discussed.

Effect of the stirrer clearance on particle suspension in agitated vessels

The influence of the stirrer clearance C on the hydrodynamics of agitated vesels, and particularly on the minimum stirrer velocity for the complete suspension of solid particles, NSUPjSUPs, may be considerable; the subject is of practical interest because when the complete suspension of the solid particles is just achieved, satisfactory mass and heat transfer rates can be observed even if the power spent is rather low. The complete experimental apparatus is described in detail in previous papers