Frías Ferrer, Ángel, González García, José, Conesa, Juan A., Gadea Ramos, Enrique, Expósito Rodríguez, Eduardo, García García, Vicente, Montiel, Vicente, Aldaz Riera, Antonio
Characterization of an electrochemical industrial size filterpress reactor by hydrodynamic and mass transport studies
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10045/8342
DOI: 
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Abstract: 
This work deals with the study of the influence of turbulence promoters in hydrodynamic
and mass transport behaviour of a filter-press type electrolyser with 3250 cm2 of electrode area (model
REIM 3300 supplied by “I.D. Electroquímica”) in undivided configuration.
A simple experimental arrangement was used to generate data from electrolytic conductivity
measurements in a series of impulse-response experiments. The experimental curves has shown a strong
influence of the presence or absence of turbulence promoters inside the reactor in the hydrodynamic
behaviour. In previous papers, we used a new approach to analyse the different residence time
distributions (RTD) in other smaller reactors. In those studies a new parameter, the turbulence factor,
given as Nαθβ, was defined and employed to classify the turbulence promoters. The model used in those
papers assumes plug flow with dispersion and flow exchange with stagnant zones and uses three
parameters: Nα, θβ and Pe. Nα characterises the rate of exchange between the stagnant zones and the
dispersed plug flow, θβ is the ratio between volume in dispersed plug flow/total volume and Pe is the
Peclet number. In this present work a new complication has been taken into account due to the presence
of two peaks in the RTD curves. Then a model with two paths has been used in order to describe the
hydrodynamic behaviour of this electrochemical industrial size filterpress reactor.
The optimised values of the parameters provided by the model give a plug-flow hydrodynamic behaviour
with low axial dispersion for the reactor with turbulence promoters and more mixing for the empty
configuration.
The classification obtained by electrochemical method (mass transport enhancement factor) for the
turbulence promoters (plastic nets) is compared with the obtained from hydrodynamic study.
Keywords:Electrochemical, Filterpress
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