Ghatage, Swapnil V.Swapnil V.GhatageBhole, Manish R.Manish R.BholePadhiyar, NitinNitinPadhiyarJoshi, Jyeshtharaj B.Jyeshtharaj B.JoshiEvans, Geoffrey M.Geoffrey M.Evans2025-08-302025-08-302014-01-0110.1016/j.cej.2013.08.0952-s2.0-84885221561http://repository.iitgn.ac.in/handle/IITG2025/21125The estimation of critical gas holdup at which the transition from homogeneous regime to heterogeneous regime occurs is crucial for the design and scale-up of multiphase reactors. A number of experimental and empirical studies are published in the literature, however, there exists a lack of modeling studies which can satisfactorily predict the flow regime transition in three-phase sparged reactors. In the present work, the theory of linear stability analysis has been extended to investigate the hydrodynamic stability of three-phase sparged reactors (slurry bubble columns and three-phase fluidization). A mathematical model has been developed for the prediction of regime transition over a wide range of bubble size (0.7-20×10^-3m) and terminal rise velocity (80-340×10^-3m/s), particle settling velocity (1-1000×10^-3m/s), particle concentration (0.0007-30vol%) and slurry density (800-5000kg/m³). It was observed that the developed model predicts the transition gas holdup within an absolute deviation of 12% for three-phase sparged reactors. It was also observed that the developed generalized stability criterion predicts the regime transition in two-phase systems satisfactorily when applied to bubble columns. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.falseBubble column | Flow regime transition | Linear stability analysis | Slurry bubble column | Three-phase fluidizationArticle307-3301 January 201413arJournal12WOS:000328804200037