Numerical investigation on hydrodynamic performance of liquid lead lithium bubble column using population balance model

Using bubble column to extract tritium from lead lithium (Pb–17Li) eutectic is an effective way in the process of tritium extraction in liquid blanket system, where the hydrodynamic characteristics of the gas–liquid two-phase flow in the columns play a very important role. In order to understand the two-phase flow details and investigate the influence factors on the hydrodynamic performance, in this paper the flow behaviors in the cylindrical bubble columns with different heights and purge gas inlet velocities using computational fluid dynamics coupled with population balance model were simulated. Liquid flow field, bubble Sauter mean diameter, time-averaged gas holdup and two-phase interfacial area for the different cases were obtained and compared. The simulation results showed good agreement with previous studies, and which indicated that bubble size and gas holdup formation are mainly determined by vortical flow. In addition, interfacial area can be enhanced by increasing the purge gas inlet velocity and column height. However, the enhancement effect will trail away when the gas inlet velocity is too fast, and the contribution of column height is relatively small.