Oxygen transfer characteristics in a pilot scale surface aeration vessel with Simcar aerator

The volumetric mass transfer coefficient, KLa, was determined by dynamic method in a surface aerated pilot scale squared vessel up to 0.531 m3 equipped with Simcar type impeller. Through surface aeration, the oxygen transfer characteristics were investigated with the variations of operating variables such as stirring speed, impeller diameter, liquid height and power input per liquid volume (P0/V). It was seen from the results of different oxygen concentration absorption that the dynamic method might lead to errors in KLa when air was used for absorption. To provide reliable KLa values measured by dynamic, the KLa data using pure oxygen were used and confirmed with feeding steady-state method (FSM). As expected, KLa depends on P0/V, impeller size and liquid height. However, for Simcar type impeller, the KLa shows linear dependency on P0/V in contrast to majority of correlations reported in the literature which shows KLa variation of (P0/V)0.65 for disk type impeller. Moreover, it was interesting to find that the bubble behaviors inside the vessel computed by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) could explain qualitatively the KLa changes with operating variables. For the purpose of scale-up procedures, the empirical correlations for predicting KLa were developed within +/- 2% accuracy.