Design and Hydrodynamic Characterization of a Draft Tube Baffle Tank for Lab-Scale

Abstract

For process development on lab-scale, it is necessary to have equipment that represents the industrial apparatuses as similar as possible to offer short time-to-market. Accordingly, a draft tube baffle (DTB) crystallizer was scaled down from typical m3-scale to 1 L filling volume. The suspension characteristics were determined for fluidized crystals in saturated solution. For further characterization of the DTB tank, the residence time of the liquid and solid phases were experimentally determined for the continuous operation mode. Additionally, the classifying behavior of the particles in the DTB was investigated.