Scale-Up of a Rotating Packed Bed Reactor with a Mesh-Pin Rotor: (II) Mass Transfer and Application

A systematic scale-up study on a rotating packed bed (RPB) reactor is essential before the industrial application. However, the mass transfer and application performance of the RPB reactor with a scale-up mesh-pin rotor (MPR) are still unclear. In this work, the mass transfer, including effective interfacial area (a e) and liquid-side volume mass transfer coefficient (k L a e), of the RPB reactor with scale-up MPR was investigated. An amendatory k L a e model for the scale-up MPR was established based on hydrodynamic studies. The calculation results from the amended model were validated by experimental data under deviations of ±20%. Taking H2S removal as an application case, the removal efficiency by scale-up MPR was not lower than 96.98%. No obvious scale-up effect was observed in the RPB reactor with two different-sized MPRs, which can be regarded as a scale-up strategy for this kind of RPB reactor.