To overcome the disadvantages of the rotating bed available in open literature, a novel kind of high gravity device-rotating zigzag bed (RZB) was developed, which exhibits many superior features owing to its unique rotor combining a rotational part with a stationary one. The outstanding characteristics of RZB are its capability of middle-feed and easily realizing multirotor configuration in one unit by simply installing multiple rotors along the same axis. Thus one unit of RZB can be applied to continuous distillation processes with a higher mass transfer capacity. A preliminary test of mass transfer performance of the RZB in a pilot-scale system using methanol-water was carried out in this study. Experimental results show its excellent mass transfer behavior with an acceptable pressure drop. Comparison with rotating packing bed (RPB) shows that RZB provides equivalent mass transfer efficiency to RPB but exhibits excellent operability with a higher turndown ratio than that of RPB. Comparison with valve tray indicates that the baffle efficiency of RZB is slightly lower than the plate efficiency of valve tray. But if the difference between the tray space and baffle space is taken into consideration, RZB provides much higher efficiency than that of valve tray. Therefore the RZB is a kind of high efficiency gas-liquid contactor and a promising alternative in chemical process industries.