Experimental Investigation of Pressure Drop, Liquid Hold-Up and Mass Transfer Parameters in a 0.5 m Diameter Absorber Column

Packed towers are common as gas/liquid contacting units for separation processes. Several studies have been performed to measure and model pressure drop, liquid hold-up and effective mass transfer area. However, most investigations have concentrated on distillation operation and the correlations obtained may not be directly applicable to reactive absorption. The present work presents a study of hydrodynamics and mass transfer properties of Sulzer structured packing Mellapak 2X using both an inorganic and an amine solvent. The pilot plant has an absorber column with packing height of 5 m and diameter 0.5 m. In this paper results for absorption studies and pressure drop, liquid hold-up and effective mass transfer area are presented. Dependencies of liquid flow, gas flow and viscosity were in agreement with correlations found in literature. New correlations for the hydrodynamic characteristics will be implemented in an in-house software as a basis for absorber and desorber design. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.