Design and conception of an innovative packing for separation column — Part III: Development of new hydrodynamic and mass transfer correlations for a wire-based lattice packing

Abstract

This paper presents accurate models evaluating the hydrodynamic and separation behavior of an innovative packing structure called Tetra Spline (TS) packing. The newly designed internal is a wire-based lattice packing fabricated via additive manufacturing for gas-liquid contact systems, such as distillation and absorption columns. Using dimensional analysis, four correlations are developed for the prediction of dry and wet pressure drops, flooding velocity, and HETP of the TS internals in a two-phase system, regardless of its physicochemical properties. The performances are modeled based on extensive experimental data described in a previous work. These data are obtained by performing hydrodynamic and mass transfer characterizations on fifteen different TS configurations. Then, some of the proposed correlations are compared to other models available in literature. The final step will highlight that after optimization of the geometrical parameters the TS packing can reach high performances.