The first three chapters of this part dealt with two-phase reactions. Although catalysts are not generally present in these systems, they can be used in dissolved form in the liquid phase. This, however, does not increase the number of phases. On the other hand, there are innumerable instances of gas-liquid reactions in which the catalyst is present in solid form. A popular example of this is the slurry reactor so extensively employed in reactions such as hydrogenation and oxidation. There are also situations where the solid is a reactant or where a phasetransfer catalyst is immobilized on a solid support that gives rise to a third phase. A broad classification of three-phase reactions and reactors is presented in Table 17.1 (not all of which are considered here). This is not a complete classification, but it includes most of the important (and potentially important) types of reactions and reactors. The thrust of this chapter is on reactions and reactors involving a gas phase, a liquid phase, and a solid phase which can be either a catalyst (but not a phasetransfer catalyst) or a reactant, with greater emphasis on the former. The book by Ramachandran and Chaudhari (1983) on three-phase catalytic reactions is particularly valuable. Other books and reviews include those of Shah (1979), Chaudhari and Ramachandran (1980), Villermaux (1981), Shah et al. (1982), Hofmann (1983), Crine and L’Homme (1983), Doraiswamy and Sharma (1984), Tarmy et al. (1984), Shah and Deckwer (1985), Chaudhari and Shah (1986), Kohler (1986), Chaudhari et al. (1986), Hanika and Stanek (1986), Joshi et al. (1988), Concordia (1990), Mills et al. (1992), Beenackers and Van Swaaij (1993), and Mills and Chaudhari (1997). Doraiswamy and Sharma (1984) also present a discussion of gas-liquid-solid noncatalytic reactions in which the solid is a reactant. In Chapter 7 we saw how Langmuir-Hinshelwood-Hougen-Watson (LHHW) models are normally used to describe the kinetics of gas-solid (catalytic) or liquid-solid (catalytic) reactions, and in Chapters 14 to 16 we saw how mass transfer between gas and liquid phases can significantly alter the rates and regimes of these two-phase reactions.
Diffusion models and scale-up