Mass transfer in a liquid-liquid jet with cocurrent laminar flow

Abstract

The mass transfer coefficients in the dispersed (jet) and continuous phases of a laminar liquid-liquid jet apparatus were individually measured under the conditions of cocurrent down flow. For the dispersed phase mass transfer, experiments were performed on the dissolution of MIBK, n-butanol and cyclohexanol into a water jet. For the continuous phase mass transfer, experiments were carried out on the dissolution of water into a continuous phase of n-butanol and extraction of I 2 from cyclohexane and toluene into an aqueous Na 2S 2O 3 solution jet with an instantaneous irreversible reaction at the interface. These systems were chosen so that the physical properties varied in a large enough range to examine the effects of the jet shape and the velocity gradients at the interface on the mass transfer coefficients. When the median diameter of the jet was used as a representative diameter for any calculation and the interfacial velocity was evaluated as 1.2 times the value predicted from the expression for a fully developed relaxed jet, all the observed mass transfer coefficients were shown to agree with the penetration theory with an average error of 7.3%.