Comparative Study of Fixed and Fluidized Bed Reactor for Zirconium Tetrachloride Production

Abstract

In this research, zirconium tetrachloride production is studied as one of the stages of zirconium production. Basically, there are two main methods for producing zirconium tetrachloride from zirconium dioxide: The first and older method used in Iran is the fixed bed process. Despite the advantage of the process and equipment simplicity, this method has a lot of problems, including low efficiency and operator safety problems. In this study, the efficiencies of this method and a newer technique that is fluidized bed reactor were compared. Although the capacity of the reactors are very different, according to that comparison which is based on the unit weight of zirconium production, the result has enough validity. Based on this study, the efficiency of the fluidized bed reactor is 14% higher than that of the fixed bed

Keywords

• zirconium tetrachloride
• fluidized bed reactor
• zirconium dioxide