Liquid‐bridge flow in the channel of helical string and its application to gas–liquid contacting process

Abstract

To solve the problems of the traditional packings, such as high pressure drop, mal-distribution and short liquid residence time, a helical flow structured packings was proposed. Two different flow patterns, liquid-bridge flow and liquiddrop flow were identified when the width of the channel of the helical string was adjusted. Moreover, the characteristics of the helical liquid-bridge flow including maximum liquid loading, mean thickness of liquid film, mean residence time and effective specific surface area, were examined. And the separation efficiency was studied by the lab-scale distillation column. In comparison, the effective specific surface area of the helical flow type packings is almost as large as the traditional B1-350Y structured packings, but with thinner liquid film, longer liquid residence time and finally higher separation efficiency.

A novel helical descending liquid‐bridge for continuous demulsification

“…Cong et al 19 proposed a novel concept of helical liquid bridge flow and designed a helical‐flow‐enabling structured packing. In this scheme (Figure 1A), the water flow rapidly formed a stable and continuous liquid bridge in the 2‐mm‐wide channel of the helical string.…”

A computational fluid dynamics‐based method to investigate and optimize novel liquid distributor

“…Compared with the plate towers, the packed towers have a higher gas–liquid contact area and weaker gas–liquid interaction, which leads to higher mass transfer efficiency, higher operating flexibility, and lower pressure drop. Therefore, packings, the core component of packed towers, have always been a research hotspot 3–7 …”

A novel arterial Wick for gas–liquid phase separation

“…Bernate and Bernate and Thiessen extended this work to consider the effects of contact angle on a finite helical wire support. Recently, helical structures have been proposed to solve the packing problem in gas–liquid contacting processes as well . The channel is capable of absorbing air bubbles of various sizes from water at a rate of over 50 bubbles/s at a single point on the channel (a typical bubbling frequency from a single nucleation site in nucleate pool boiling) and transporting the air to a constant‐pressure reservoir.…”