Measurement of Efficiency of Distribution of Liquid Feed in a Gas-Solid Fluidized Bed Reactor

A technique has been developed to give a quantitative measure of the contacting efficiency of liquid feed onto particles in a hot fluidized bed for petroleum applications. Copper naphthenate was used as a tracer to measure the coating of atomized bitumen feed onto solid coke particles in a fluid coking pilot plant. The pilot plant consisted of a reactor vessel, where bitumen was injected into the reactor as feed, and a regeneration vessel, where coke particles were heated and circulated back to the reactor. Atomized bitumen droplets were injected through a feed nozzle into the reactor section. A small concentration of copper naphthenate tracer, pre-diluted with bitumen, was injected upstream of the nozzle, following a step function with time. As the bitumen reacted, the copper formed solid deposits on the surface of the particles, effectively labeling the particles that had been contacted by the bitumen droplets. Frequent coke samples from the solids exiting and entering the reactor were taken during and after the injection of the tracer.Two types of measurements were conducted on the coke samples; bulk copper concentration in the samples, using Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP), and copper concentration on individual coke particles using energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis. The data for bulk copper concentration confirmed that the solids were mixed rapidly in the reactor, approximating a Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR). The EDX analysis of individual coke particles demonstrated, however, that a significant fraction of the coke particles within the samples were not labeled with copper. This result indicated that many of the particles in the fluidized bed were not contacted by bitumen in the reactor. Consequently, the tracer technique was used to compare the coating efficiency of bitumen on coke particles by operation of different nozzle designs.