Füllkörper oder Packungen? Wem gehört die Zukunft?

Abstract

AbstractOver the years a large number of dumped and ordered packings have been developed for effective treatment of material in absorption, desorption, extraction and rectification columns. The task of these column packings is to improve the mass transfer between a liquid phase and a gas or vapor phase. Furthermore, they also have to assure large throughputs at low pressure drops. When elaborating possible solutions for the separation of liquid mixtures or for cleaning flows of waste air or waste water in mass transfer columns, the planning engineer repeatedly faces the question of which dumped packing or which arranged packing presents the most favorable design from a process engineering standpoint. In recent years the opinion has often been voiced that arranged packings are always more effective than dumped packings. The purpose of this paper is to show that a number of applications exist in which modern dumped packings are equal or even superior to arranged packings. On the basis of selected examples the author discusses when the use of a structured packing is preferable with regard to process engineering.