Design and erection of an entrained flow reactor

Aim

Design and erection of an entrained flow reactor for studying gas/solid reactions on a time scale of less than 10 s at temperatures between 100 °C and 1000 °C. The design must be flexible, so that it is possible to test other reactor designs.

Constrains

1. The design must be flexible in order to use it for a wide range of investigations
2. Extraction of both gas and solid samples should be possible
3. It should be possible to change the gas composition

Solution

A thorough literature review led to the conclusion that such an experimental facility did not exist. However, numerous reactors which could serve as inspiration have been built. The first thing we did was to divide the design into blocks, as shown in the figure. The desired properties were then assigned to each block and based on this equipment was selected. Based on this approach we were able to develop the entrained flow reactor fast and at the same time full filling the requirements! Below we have summarized what kind of equipment we have been choosing.

• Gas supply: Here we were choosing mass flow controllers which make it very easy to change the gas composition and amount
• Material supply: A loss in weight screw feeder was chosen, do to the accurate feeding and the high degree of flexibility.
• Reactor: In order to make the reactor design flexible a 1,2 m x 1,2 x 3 m furnace was chosen. This basically to large furnace, did that the reactor design with a minimum of effort could be changed and new experiments initiated with in less than 2 days.
• Quench chamber: Here all chemical reactions was terminated, by injecting an inert cold gas into the gas/solid suspension.
• Solid gas separation: Here a double filter was chosen in order to ensure that it was possible to collect solid material from a steady sate of operation.
• Gas analysis: A rack with IR measurement equipment was erected, but in principle all kind of gas analysis equipment could be incorporated.
• Fan: in order to control the pressure in system a fan was installed.

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