Eldho Abraham

ABSTRACT

Gas Inducing Mechanically Agitated Contactors (GIMAC) are now gaining importance as its economical, environmental and process benefits as concern. This paper, the air induction mechanism in GIMACs has been elaborated. The main endeavour here is to make a comparison of the energy consumption of the GIMAC with the conventional mechanically agitated sparged gas contactors. In the experimentation water has been used as the medium and the induced air flow rates at various impeller submersion depths and different rotational speed have been measured along with the resulting gas holdup and respective energy consumption. The relation between the rotational speed and the induced gas flow rate has been investigated. In addition to this the effect of the impeller submersion depth on the gas induction rate and the gas holdup of the GIMAC has been analyzed. The effect of the induced gas flow rate on the gas holdup has also been studied. The performance of the conventional sparging system is also measured with respect to the same above parameters. The both performance have been compared in terms of power consumption and gas holdup. Key words: Gas inducing mechanically agitated contactor, Mechanically agitated sparged gas contactors, Gas holdup, Rate of gas induction, Dispersed gas phase.