CHINA PARTICUOLOGY Vol. 3, Nos.

1-2, 23-25, 2005

PRESSURE DROP ACROSS A FIXED BED REACTOR WITH

MECHANICAL FAILURE OF CATALYST PELLETS DESCRIBED
BY SIMPLIFIED ERGUN’S EQUATION
Dong Zhang, Panfeng Fan, Dongfang Wu and Yongdan Li*
Department of Catalysis Science and Technology and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Applied Catalysis Science & Technology,
School of Chemical Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, P. R. China
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: 0086-22-27405613, E-mail: ydli@tju.edu.cn

Abstract The pressure drop across a laboratory-scale catalyst packed bed with mechanical failure of catalyst pellets
has been examined. It was found that the increased pressure drop can be described by a simplified model deduced from
Ergun’s equation. The pressure drop is determined mainly by the term of viscous energy loss.
Keywords solid catalyst packing, mechanical failure, bulk crushing strength, pressure drop

Introduction ployed for applying a uniform force on the top of the cata-
lyst packing. The container, the disc and the support plate
The mechanical strength of solid catalyst is one of the are all made of stainless steel. The pressure drop across
most important factors for reliable and efficient perform- the catalyst bed was determined by a water-filled U-tube
ance of a fixed-bed reactor (Andrew, 1981; Denny & Twigg, manometer. Air flow was supplied by a compressor and
1980; Fulton, 1986; Gallei & Schwab, 1999). Solid cata- measured with a rotary flowmeter. A scale measuring two
lysts are often brittle and their mechanical failure is due to decimals after the millimeter was used to record bed dis-
brittle fracture arising from sudden catastrophic growth of a placement. A balance, accurate to one decimal after the
critical flaw under some tensile stress induced in the cata- gram, was used to weigh all the samples, broken and fine
lyst bulk (Li et al., 1989; Li et al., 1999a). It has been well particles. The pressure applied by the disc on the top of the
demonstrated that single-particle crushing strength of packing was calculated from the pressure gauge of the
catalyst pellets follows the Weibull distribution. In 2004, a hydraulic system.
standard method for the determination of bulk crushing
strength (BCS) of catalysts and catalyst carriers was is- Table 1 Physical properties of the Al2O3 catalyst samples
sued by ASTM D 32 committee (ASTM, 2004). A model for
Geometric size/mm
BCS of a spherical catalyst was proposed by Li et al. No. Shape Pellet density/(g⋅cm-3)
Diameter Length
(1999b). The model was validated for other shapes after- 1 Spheres 4.3~4.6 n/a 1.19
wards (Li et al., 2000) and has a close meaning to the 2 Spheres 5.7~6.6 n/a 1.42
reliability of a fixed-bed reactor, and therefore along with 3 Trilobite extrudates 1.44* 3~20 n/a
the BCS test method it is expected to be useful in the 4 Cylindrical extrudates 1.38 4~30 n/a
mechanical reliability simulation and prediction of practical
fixed-bed reactors. Wu et al. (2003) examined, with well *
designed experiments, the effect of the mechanical failure d
of catalyst pellets on pressure drop and found that if the
pressure drop across a catalyst packing is used as a crite-
rion for the strength measurement, it provides much useful
information. However, they did not arrive at a model to
quantify the influence of mechanical failure on pressure
drop. In this work, we analyze the pressure drop across a
reactor with mechanical failure of pellets.

Experimental
Table 1 gives the physical properties of the catalyst
samples tested, differently shaped commercial γ -Al2O3 Fig. 1 Experimental apparatus for bulk crushing strength and pressure
catalyst supports: sample 1 and 2 are spherical in shape, drop: 1 sealed cover; 2 movable disc; 3 sample container; 4 sample;
5 support plate; 6 hydraulic system; 7 pressure gauge; 8 dis-
while sample 3 is trilobite pellet and sample 4 is extruded
placement scale; 9 U tube; 10 flowmeter.
cylindrical pellet.
Fig. 1 illustrates the apparatus for the measurements of
The running resistance of the mechanical system of the
pressure drop and BCS. A cylindrical sample container with
apparatus was first determined. When the container is
a diameter of 54.3 mm was used. A movable disc was em-
24 CHINA PARTICUOLOGY Vol. 3, Nos. 1-2, 2005

empty, and as the plate rises at a constant velocity, the the kinetic energy losses constitute a minor part.
reading of the pressure gauge is regarded as the running So Eq. (1) becomes
resistance of the mechanical system. An experimental ΔP μ u (1 − ε )2 ΔP0
scheme was adopted for static pressure drop and per- =A 2 + , (2)
L d ε3 L0
centage of broken particles or fine particles, respectively.
About 125 mL of a pretreated sample was charged into or, alternately
the container. The initial pressure drop at an air flow rate of ΔP ΔP0 μ u (1 − ε )2
− =A 2 , (3)
3 m3⋅h-1 was read. Then an increased top pressure was L L0 d ε3
applied. When the oil pressure reached a specific loading where ΔP is the pressure drop, L the packing height, u the
value, or a specific bed displacement was reached, the superficial air velocity based on empty column cross sec-
hydraulic system was stopped being oiled, and the pres- tion, μ the viscosity of air, ε the void of packing, d the
sure drops was recorded with the specific air flow. Then the nominal diameter of the particles, and A is a parameter that
sample was removed from the container and sieved using can be obtained by linear least-square regression of ex-
a 1.25-mm sieve. Remnant of the original sample and the perimental data. For spherical particles, it is assumed, for
fine particles produced by crushing were weighed. The simplicity, that the spheres break into two halves, so the
weight percentage of fine particles below the sieve was diameter of particle can be written as
recorded as BCS. For samples 1 and 2, the weight per-
1 + 0.5 × dm / m
centage of broken spheres after pressing was also deter- d = d0 ,
mined by hand-picking. The experiment was repeated for 1 + dm / m
different pressures applied on top of the sample. in which dm/m is the broken percentage of spheres. For
particles shaped other than spheres, d=d0.
Description of Pressure Drop
Results and Discussion
The pressure drop through a gas-solid packed bed can
be described by the equation first proposed by Ergun Fig. 2 shows plots between the pressure gradient,
(1952) and corroborated by many later workers (Mac- μu (1 − ε )2
ΔP L − ΔP0 L 0 and for the four samples, dem-
Donald et al., 1979; Zhao et al., 2000): d2 ε3
ΔP ρu 2 1− ε μ u (1 − ε )2 onstrating fairly good linearity, thus corroborating the as-
= 1.75 + 150 2 , (1) sumption that viscous energy loss is the dominant factor
L d ε 3
d ε3
for the total pressure drop of the small packing. From the
in which the total energy loss in the fixed bed is treated as
slopes of the lines in Fig. 2 were derived the values of the
ρu 2 1 − ε
the sum of kinetic energy loss 1.75 and viscous coefficient A which are listed in Table 2. The A value of
d ε3
small spherical particles is larger than that for large
μ u (1 − ε )2 spheres, and the A value of cylindrical extrudates is larger
energy loss 150 . However, in a reactor with me-
d2 ε3 than that of the trilobite extrudates. Physically the value of
chanical failure of catalyst pellets, the situation is different A in Eq. (3) stands for the susceptibility of the total bed
and complex. As the applied top pressure increases during pressure drop to the change of flow and bed packing pa-
BCS measurement, the height of the packing decreases rameters. For instances, with the catalyst pellet fracture,
and the packing is densified. As the process continues, the void of the packing ε becomes smaller, and the linear
more catalyst pellets fracture and the void of the packing flow velocity becomes larger. Here only the resulting di-
becomes smaller and smaller. In the packing, the Reynolds ameter change of the spherical samples is considered. For
number is generally as low as about 100. For such low the extrudates, due to the large length-to-diameter ratio, it
Reynolds number flow, it is reasonable to assume that the is reasonable to assume that the breaking of the pellets
viscous energy loss constitutes the major resistance, and does not much affect their nominal diameter.

9000
30000
80000 40000
8000 Sample 2 Sample 3 Sample 4
70000 Sample 1 25000 35000
7000
60000 30000
20000
ΔP/L−ΔP0/L0

6000
50000 25000
5000
40000 15000 20000
4000
30000 10000 15000
3000
20000 10000
2000
5000
10000 5000
1000
0 0 0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 0 10 20 30 40 50 0 50 100 150 200 0 50 100 150 200
μu (1 − ε )2 μu (1 − ε )
2
μu (1 − ε )
2 μu (1 − ε )2
d2 ε3 d2 ε3 d2 ε3 d2 ε3

Fig. 2 Comprehensive plots of increment of pressure drop in fixed bed.

 Zhang, Fan, Wu & Li: Pressure Drop across a Fixed Bed Reactor
Table 2 Coefficient A for increase of pressure drop in Eq. ( 3) for dif-
ferent catalyst samples
Particle shape Sample 1 Sample 2 Sample 3 Sample 4
A 318.71 208.72 146.76 235.65
Conclusions
In a fixed bed solid catalyst reactor with mechanical fail-
ure of catalyst, the viscous energy loss plays a dominant
role on pressure drop, while the contribution of kinetic en-
ergy loss is negligible. The increment of the pressure drop
with the fracture of the catalyst pellets can be described by
a simplified Ergun’s equation. For differently shaped pellets,
the model coefficient A has different values, which provides
an index of the susceptibility of the pressure drop to the
change of the physical properties of the packing during
pellet fracture, e.g., the void of the bed, the flow velocity
and the diameter of the particles.
Acknowledgement
This project has been supported in part by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 20425619) and the Tian-
jin University 985 program.
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Manuscript received February 28, 2005 and accepted March 8, 2005.