Hydrodynamics of a Fast and Highly Exothermic Liquid-Liquid Oxidation Process with in-situ Gas Production in Microreacto

Hydrodynamics characteristics of a fast and highly exothermic liquid-liquid oxidation process with in-situ gas production in microreactors was studied using a newly developed experimental method. In the adipic acid synthesis through the K/A oil oxidation with nitric acid, bubble generation modes were divided into four categories. The gas production became more intensive and unstable, even explosive with increasing the oil phase feed rate and the temperature. A novel automatic image processing method was established to monitor the instantaneous fluid velocity online by tracking the gas-liquid interface. The axial fluid velocity at the same location was unstable with obvious fluctuation due to the unstable gas production rate. Furthermore, the actual average residence time was obtained easily with being only 36% of the space-time minimally, beneficial for establishing accurate kinetic and mass transfer models with time participation. Finally, an empirical correlation was developed to predict the actual residence time under different conditions.