Table of content

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Table of content

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Polyester 1 1.2 Conventional design 3 1.3 Reactive distillation 5 1.4 Objective 7 1.5 Literature background 8

1.5.1 Bubble column and packed bubble column 8

1.5.2 Hold up 15 1.5.3 Dispersion 15 1.5.4 Mass transfer 17

2 Experimental

set-up

19

2.1 Experimental set-up 19 2.1.1 Set up 19 2.1.2 Instrumentation 21 2.2 Packings 25 2.3 Fluids 28 2.3.1 Liquid stream 28 2.3.2 Gas stream 31 2.4 Experimental design 31 2.5 Procedures 36

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3 Preliminary

tests

39

3.1 Viscous liquids 39 3.2 Poly(ethylene glycol) 43 3.3 Column capacity 44

4 Gas hold-up

46

4.1 Model 46 4.1.1 Data correction 47 4.2 Bubble column 50 4.3 Flexipac 54 4.4 SuperPak 57 4.5 Comparison 60

5 Axial

dispersion

63

5.1 Model 63 5.1.1 Data correction 67 5.2 Bubble column 68 5.3 Flexipac 72 5.4 SuperPak 75 5.5 Comparison 78

6 Mass

transfer

81

6.1 Model 81 6.1.1 Data correction 83 6.2 Bubble column 85 6.3 Flexipac 89

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6.4 SuperPak 92

6.5 Comparison 94

7 Conclusions

97

Appendix

A

–

Poly(ethylene

glycol)

99

A.1 Column hold-up 99

A.2 Bubble column 100

A.3 Flexipac 100

A.4 SuperPak 101

Appendix B – Matlab code

103

B.1 Main script 103

B.2 Partial differential equation solver function 109

B.3 Experimental data 111

Appendix C – Axial dispersion data

131

C.1 Bubble column 131

C.2 Flexipac 137

C.3 SuperPak 143

Appendix D – Mass transfer data

149

D.1 Bubble column 149

D.2 Flexipac 155

D.3 SuperPak 161