Question

Fluidized bed reactors allow scaling up.

(a) True

(b) False

This question was posed to me in my homework.

My query is from Immobilized Enzymes topic in chapter Immobilized Enzymes and their Uses of Enzyme Technology

Answer 1

Right choice is (b) False

Easy explanation: Fluidized bed reactors are those wherein the flow and gas/substrate keeps the immobilised enzyme particles in a fluidized state. FBRs are usually tapered outwards at the exit to allow for a wide range of flow rates. Very high flow rates are avoided as they cause channeling and catalyst loss. The major disadvantage of development of FBR process is the difficulty in scaling-up these reactors. PBRs allow scale-up factors of greater than 50000 but, because of the markedly different fluidization characteristics of different sized reactors, FBRs can only be scaled-up by a factor of 10 – 100 each time. Hence the above statement is false.