The slurry bubble column reactors with implanted vertical heat exchange pipe bundles are widely used in practice.Hydrodynamics for this reactor is very complicated and very few works were reported before.In this paper

velocity and gas hold up distributions along the radial direction of a Φ500 mm×5000 mm bubble column with and without vertical pipe bundles were measured with the Pavlov tube and conductivity probe respectively.The experimental results showed that the vertical pipes would remarkably enhance the axial velocity and the large scale liquid circulation on the one hand

while impede the radial or lateral turbulent motion of liquid and bubbles on the other hand.The effect led to steeper distributions of axial velocity and gas hold up

and enhancement of liquid and gas phase backmixing

which increased the risk of scale up for bubble column reactor with vertical pipe bundles.At a lower gas superficial velocity while sustaining turbulent bubble flow regime the “funneling effect” of the pipe bundles would become more remarkable.