OPTIMIZATION OF BUBBLE-COLUMN SLURRY REACTORS VIA NATURAL DELAYED-FEED ADDITION

The purpose of this paper is to present a simple optimization procedure for maximizing the productivity of bubble-column slurry reactors for reactions with maximal-rate kinetics. The reactor performance is simulated using a two-phase cell model. The notion of natural delayed-feed addition of the gaseous reactant to the slurry is introduced and exploited in a dynamic-programming formulation. This approach allows us to dramatically reduce the problem size and thus to analytically solve for the criteria of the optimal policy of the reactor. Since the gaseous feed is added to the slurry phase along the length of the column and its rate of addition is controllable, near optimum operation can be achieved. The validity of the approach is demonstrated for phenyl acetylene hydrogenation to styrene. © 1990, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.