Ultrafast X-Ray Tomography of Turbulent Bubble Flows

Objective

Multiphase reactors are omnipresent in chemical engineering and dominate today's manufacturing of chemical products such that they are present in most of our daily products. That implies a huge economic and ecologic impact of the reactor performance. The basic idea of a multiphase reactor is to contact chemical precursors and catalysts in a sufficient time for the reaction to proceed, but reactor performance is crucially affected by the complex reactor hydrodynamics. A proper optimization would imply that multiphase flows are adequately understood.
Gas bubbled into a pool of liquid is the simplest example of a multiphase reactor. Bubble columns or distillation columns, however, house millions of bubbles emerging in swarms with interactions such as coalescence and breakage events that determine the whole process behaviour. The understanding of such disperse gas-liquid flows is still fragmentary and requires a ground-breaking update.
The aim of the project is to apply the worldwide fastest tomographic imaging method to study such turbulent gas-liquid dispersed flows in column reactors such as bubble columns and tray columns. The project intends to provide unique insights into the bubble swarm behaviour at operating conditions that have been hidden so far from the engineer's eyes.
The project is foreseen to enhance the fundamental understanding of hydrodynamic parameters, evolving flow patterns and coherent structures as well as coalescence and breakage mechanisms, regardless of if the systems are pressurized, filled with particle packings, operated with organic liquid, slurries or with internals.
The interdisciplinary team shall re-establish the process intensification route for multiphase reactors by a new understanding of small-scale phenomena, their mathematical description and extrapolation towards the reactor scale and therewith providing a tool for reactor optimization.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• engineering and technology chemical engineering separation technologies distillation
• natural sciences chemical sciences catalysis

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

• FP7-IDEAS-ERC - Specific programme: "Ideas" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

• ERC-SG-PE8 - ERC Starting Grant - Products and process engineering

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

ERC-2012-StG_20111012
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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-SG - ERC Starting Grant

Host institution

Beneficiaries (1)