Effect of conical section structure on liquid-liquid cyclone reactor for isobutane alkylation catalyzed by ionic liquid

Abstract The liquid-liquid cyclone reactor (LLCR) integrating fast mixing and quick separation is a promising device for isobutane alkylation catalyzed by ionic liquids. The conical section of LLCR is an essential part where both mixing and separation occur. To optimize the mixing and separation performance of LLCR, four designs of the conical section (single-cone structure, standard dual-cone structure, parabolic structure and hyperbolic structure) were studied in this work. The cold model experiment and numerical simulation were carried out to investigate the distribution of light phase, mixing performance and separation performance. The formation of the pseudo-steady light phase core was observed from experiments and simulations. The effective mixing zone of LLCR was proposed in this study by obtaining the boundaries of the light phase core and the bottom of the locus of zero axial velocity. The distributions of the turbulent energy dissipation rate and the mean separation efficiency were employed to evaluate the mixing and separation performance, respectively. The result showed that the LLCR with hyperbolic structure were better than the other three structures in terms of mixing performance and separation efficiency.