In the present work, dispersed phase holdups have been measured in a Hanson mixer-settler extraction pilot plant with seven stages for two different liquid-liquid systems. The effects of agitation speed, dispersed and continuous phase flow rates have been investigated under a variety of operating conditions. Dispersed phase axial holdup profiles, determined by a sampling method, showed a strong nonuniformity. The results also showed that the dispersed phase holdup changes largely with the direction of mass transfer. Finally, an empirical correlation in terms of physical properties of liquid systems and operating variables was proposed to predict the holdup and good agreement between experimental data and calculated values of holdup was obtained.

This paper presents a methodology for calculation of a slug, two-phase flow HOLD-UP in a horizontal pipe. The advantage of this method is that the slug unit hold up can be calculated directly from the solutions of flow field equations with no need to use correlations. An experimental apparatus to measure air-water hold up was setup. The flow pattern and liquid holdup in horizontal and inclined pipes, from angles 5o to 40o, for air-water two-phase flow, are experimentally observed. The test section, with an inside diameter of 30 mm and 3 m in length, was made of plexy-glass to permit visual observations of the flow patterns. The proposed model was tested extensively against experimentally collected data. Furthermore, other data sources for slug flow in horizontal pipes, for air-water and air-oil systems, were also used for comparison. The presented methodology was compared against four recently developed models of a two phase, slug flow holdup in horizontal pipes. Not only does the presented model demonstrate good agreement, with less than 6.8% error, compared to the experimental data, but also has less error compared to other models. These results substantiate the general validity of the model.

In this study, the effect of operating parameters on dispersed phase holdup in liquid-liquid extraction process has been investigated. Three chemical systems (Toluene/Water, Butyl acetate/Water, and n-Butanol/Water) were utilized and holdup was considered in a wide range of interfacial tensions through a Scheibel extraction column. Various rotor speeds were examined on the certain velocities of dispersed and continuous phases. It was found that with increasing rotor speed in a Scheibel extraction column, the drop size was reduced and drops were trapped inside the packed so that an increase in the dispersed phase holdup happened. An obvious increasing trend of dispersed phase holdup was observed as a result of increase in dispersed phase velocity for all systems operating under 2 different rotor speed, namely, 100 and 140rpm. However, the results showed that increase in the velocity of continuous phase would not make significant effect on the holdup. During examining the effect of both rotor speed and dispersed phase velocity, it was found that the holdup would be higher in the chemical system with the lowest interfacial tension compared with two other systems. An empirical correlation was also proposed to predict the dispersed phase holdup with AARE of 8.72%.

In this study, gas phase holdup in a gas-liquid bubble column reactor was experimentally studied. To conduct experiments, a bubble column with a height of 54 cm and a diameter of 10. 4 cm was applied. The studied systems include water-air, Gasoline-air, and Behran oil-air. Experiments were carried out in the range of 400-50 rpm agitator. Based on the Buckingham π,theorem, a semi-experimental model for gas phase holdup was presented. The results showed that with increasing viscosity from 0. 001 to 0. 0136 gas phase holdup loss due to high adhesion of bubbles at high viscosity and also the increase of bubble size at the output from the distributor decreases from 0. 41 to 0. 333. Among the selected systems, the gas phase holdup of the gas-air system was maximized. The results also showed that in materials with low viscosity, the gas phase reduction was due to the formation of liquid vortex movement and air canalization by the agitator. The best agitator speed to increase the gas phase holdup at water and oil are 150 and 400 rpm, respectively.

Bubble and slurry bubble column reactors usually work under pressures beyond the atmosphere in the industries. Although many studies have been done about bubble and slurry bubble column reactors, experimental studies under elevated pressure are very limited. In this study, the effects of pressure and slurry concentration on the gas holdup have been investigated by using pressure difference tests. The experiments of this study are made under pressures up to 18 bar and paraffin and silica are used as the liquid and solid contents. Increasing the operation pressure leads to an increase in gas holdup. It is also found out that the effect of pressure is vanished by increasing the slurry concentration. The experiments are performed in a column with a diameter of 16 cm and a height of 2.8 m. The gases used are nitrogen and air. Finally, a new experimental correlation is developed as a function of gas density (rg), superficial velocity of gas (Ug), slurry density (rSL), slurry viscosity (mSL), and liquid surface tension (sL); the correlation is obtained by using the data extracted from this investigation and is in good agreement with the experimental data.

In this work, feasibility of flow pattern and oil holdup prediction for vertical upward oil–water two–phase flow using pressure fluctuation signals was experimentally investigated. Water and diesel fuel were selected as immiscible liquids. Oil holdup was measured by Quick Closing Valve (QCV) technique, and five flow patterns were identified using high speed photography through a transparent test section with Inner Diameter (ID) of 0.0254 m. The observed flow patterns were Dispersed Oil in Water (D O/W), Dispersed Water in Oil (D W/O), Transition Flow (TF), Very Fine Dispersed Oil in Water (VFD O/W) and a new flow pattern called Dispersed Oil Slug & Water in Water (D OS& W/W). The pressure fluctuation signals were also measured by a static pressure sensor and decomposed at five levels using wavelet transform. Then, standard deviation values of decomposition levels were used as input parameters of a Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) to train the network for predicting the flow patterns. In addition, some considered numerical values for actual flow patterns together with signal energy value of each level were used as input parameters of a MultiLayer Perceptron (MLP) network to estimate the oil holdup. The results indicated good accuracy for recognition of the flow patterns (accuracy of 100% and 95.8% for training data and testing data, respectively) and oil holdup (AAPE=9.6%, R=0.984 for training data and AAPE=8.07%, R=0.99 for testing data).

Existing liquid holdup models are generally based on low gas and liquid velocities. In order to extend the applicable range of existing liquid holdup prediction models and improve its prediction accuracy, a of gas-liquid two-phase flow experiment was carried out using a pipe of inner diameter 60mm and length of 11. 5m. The superficial gas and liquid velocity ranges were 14. 07~56. 50m/s and 0. 205~1. 426m/s, respectively. The results indicate that the liquid holdup decreases with the increase of the superficial gas velocity and increases with the increase of the superficial liquid velocity. A new annular flow model for calculating low liquid holdup in horizontal pipe was developed and presented considering the relationships between the friction factor ratio of liquid phase and gas-liquid interface as well as the superficial Reynolds number of gas and liquid. The predictions of the model are found to be accurate with an average absolute error of 4. 8%. Further, on the basis of the Beggs-Brill model and the horizontal pipe model established in this paper, a new liquid holdup model for different angles was given. It was observed the resultant model is also accurate, and has an average absolute error of 10%.