PERFORMANCE OF A NEW PACKING ELEMENT FOR PACKED COLUMN USING AIR-WATER SYSTEM

Packed tower is a continuous contact equipment widely used for gas absorption, distillation and liquid-liquid extraction. It consists of a cylindrical shell filled with a suitable packing material to provide a large interfacial area of contact between the phases. Since its inception, packing has shown great progress and improvement in its design and performance. The aim of this experiment is to develop a new type of packing element for packed tower. The design concept for the new packing is by making a rigid structure that holds the soft, flexible structure. This flexible structure should be fine and thin in order to give maximum mass transfer area while the rigid structure is to provide the strength to the packing element. The new packing is developed by using simple apparatus consist of plastic tightener attached to a metal rod. The metal rod provides the strength to the packings while the plastic tightener provides the mass transfer area. Physical characteristics of the developed packing were measured and used to calculate the geometric surface area, void fraction and equivalent spherical diameter. After the new packing is completed, experiments were carried on self-developed pilot plant using air and water as the medium. Water is fed from the top of the column while air is fed from the bottom. Air and water will counter-currently in contact. Two methods were used to analyze the pressure drop and mass transfer performance; pressure drop and mass transfer test. For pressure drop, two test was conducted, the dry pressure drop and the wet pressure drop. The mass transfer performance was analyzed by evaluating the change in moisture content of the outlet gas. The entire test was set against the result of same experiment for 10 spherical marbles as reference. For the experiment set-up, air-water counter current flow system that replicates a real packed column was constructed to test the new packing element using pipe. The packing characteristics of the developed packing such as geometric surface area, void fractions, and equivalent spherical diameter of packing particle was compared with other packing elements used in the industry. Data from experiments conducted shows that packing is able to gives low pressure drops and increase mass transfer. Based on these results, it can be concluded that the developed has potential for further research.