Liquid flow behaviors in the packing zone of a rotating packed bed reactor significantly affect the mass transfer performance. However, the interaction between the rotating packing and liquid is still not clear, due to packing's complex structure. In this work, liquid jet impaction on a rotating single-layer wire mesh was investigated to clarify the interaction and liquid flow behaviors after the impaction was observed and analyzed by visualization and simulation methods. Visual experiments showed that the interaction could be divided into the shearing action generated by vertical fibers and carrying action generated by horizontal fibers of wire mesh. A dimensionless number β was introduced as a criterion to evaluate the influence of these actions on the liquid dispersion. Simulation results agreed well with the experimental results of liquid dispersion. Dynamic liquid film behaviors on the fiber surface were further simulated and the average film thickness was 21-32 μm.

The waves of liquid film flow play an important role on the process intensification in spinning disk reactors (SDRs). However, the mechanism of wave formation was still unclear. In this work, a three‐dimensional large eddy simulation was developed to investigate the mechanism, as well as the characteristics of waves in the SDR. Agreed with the imaging results, different wave patterns were identified as: smooth film, concentric, and spiral waves in spreading direction; sine‐like and pulse‐like waves in fluctuating direction. The radial and tangential relative movements among the layers of liquid film were found to dominate the formation of different wave patterns. Local average film thickness (havg) and local wave amplitude (Δh) ranged from 0 to 500 μm and 0 to 200 μm, respectively. The waves can improve the turbulent intensity and enlarge the specific surface area, resulting in the intensification of transfer processes.