Multi-scale study of wet pressure drop model for a novel structured wire gauze packing

Abstract

In this study, a novel type of structured wire gauze packing was designed, investigated, and compared with initial packings to improve hydrodynamic performances. The results of the comparison indicated that the novel packing exhibits superior performances, especially in reducing the wall flow phenomenon and lowering pressure drop. Furthermore, a new multi-scale computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method was proposed for the first time to calculate the wet pressure drop of the structured wire gauze packing. A three-dimensional VOF CFD method was established at a small scale to simulate the liquid film on a wire gauze to obtain an appropriate liquid feeding rate and contact angle. Subsequently, based on a small-scale simulation, the effective wet area was calculated at mesoscale simulation. The wet area is an important parameter for building the mechanistic wet pressure drop model. Finally, the novel packing and the mechanistic model were successfully applied in a restructuring project to validate their accuracy and reliability.