Qualitative relationships between structure and performance of rotating zigzag bed in distillation

Publication date: January 2019Source: Chemical Engineering and Processing - Process Intensification, Volume 135Author(s): Guang Q. Wang, Zhen J. Zhou, Yu M. Li, Jian B. JiAbstractRotating zigzag bed (RZB) is the centrifugal tray column, a counterpart to rotating packed bed (RPB) and has been commercialized in a number of distillation applications. In this paper, qualitative relationships between the structure and the performance of RZB rotor are studied to adjust its performance and optimize rotor structure. Several structural modifications of RZB rotor are analyzed, such as varying height of stationary baffles and blank region on the rotating baffles, additional packing layers on the stationary baffles and under the stationary disc. The performance of these RZB rotors is experimentally measured and compared to understand the fundamentals of mass transfer mechanism. The structural variations with a larger height of stationary baffles, larger height of the blank region on the rotating baffles, packing layers on the stationary baffles improves the mass transfer to some extent, however at the cost of higher pressure drop. Moreover, the stationary baffles account for the majority of the mass transfer and the lower part of baffles has a larger contribution than the upper part. Packing rings under the stationary disc contribute little to the mass transfer, which implies a very small entrainment of the liquid droplets. These qualitative relationships between the structure and the pe...

Source: Chemical Engineering and Processing: Process Intensification - December 4, 2018 Category: Chemistry Source Type: research