Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.42, No.14, 3426-3433, 2003
Integrated liquid distribution model for the corrugated-sheet-structured packed columns
An integrated liquid distribution model for the corrugated-sheet-structured packed columns is developed according to the flow mechanism of liquid in the columns. It comprises two liquid distribution models for an element of structured packing and the column wall around the element as well as two kinds of boundary conditions. The model is able to predict the variation of distribution performance of the experimental packed bed with packing height reasonably well for four kinds of initial distributions of liquid, even though the model parameters estimated by the experimental data of the first kind of initial distribution are used. The relation between the number of wet nodes of the solid net counted up from the model predicted results and the distribution performance of the packing element is analyzed for every kind of initial distribution. Because the model can explicitly describe the flow behavior of liquid in the structured packed columns, it should also be useful to the research of the mass-transfer performance combined with the liquid distribution.