On the Effect of the Surface Cleanliness of Packings upon the Capacity Characteristics of the Tower

Abstract

The present paper deals with our study on the physical absorption by pure water made for the purpose of subsequently studying the capacity characteristics of CO₂ absorption byalkaline solutions in a packing tower.
10mm glass rings were packed in a glass column of 50mm i.d. by the height of 500mm, intowhich almost pure CO₂ gas was introduced to be absorbed by distilled water.
We obtained the following two series of the results, when the temperature was reduced to 15°C.
k_La=3.30L^0.79 (1)
i.e., (H.T.U.)_L=0.303L^0.21(1a)
and k_La=4.56L^0.79 (2)
i.e., (H.T.U.)_L=0.219L^0.21 (2a)
Eq. (1) represents the results derived with the stock rings which were water washed and newly packed, therefore considered as moderately clean; while eq. (2) represents those of the repeated experiments with the same rings without repacking, which, however, were alkaline washed by being kept overnight in the same column filled with 1N-KOH solution and then water washed.
The k_La values of eq. (2) were 1.38 times that of eq. (1), mainly due to the change of the effective area; at any rate k_La was proportional to L^0.79 in both the cases.
Great differences were observed among the data of many papers in the literature concerning the capacity coefficients and the active area of packing towers. Usually no particular references have been made to the cleanliness and the preliminary treatment of the packing. According to the experiments dealt with in this paper we found that we could not neglect the effect of the cleanliness of the packings.
Also, as observed in the literative, it was difficult to obtain satisfactory data for liquor whose rate was less than 5[m³/m²·hr].