Circulating jet for enhancing the mass transfer in a gas–liquid stirred tank reactor

Abstract There are some problems in gas–liquid stirred tank reactor (STR), such as low mass transfer efficiency, high exhaust gas oxygen concentration, and low product conversion rate, due to limitations of stirring speed and input power. This article summarizes the effect of adding circulating jet internals on bubble size distribution, overall gas holdup, gas–liquid volumetric mass transfer coefficient, and power per unit volume of the STR. When circulating jet is added, the average bubble Sauter mean diameter in the STR is reduced to 1.26 mm, and the overall gas holdup is increased to 8.23%, which is an increase of 3.62 times of the original STR. The gas–liquid volumetric mass transfer coefficient is increased to 0.05556 s −1 , which is 4.84 times of the original STR. The power per unit volume is increased by only 1.4 times. These data provide references for the design and scale‐up of new jet STRs.