Study On Performance Characteristics Of Aluminum Foam Structured Packings

Since porous aluminum foam has so many excellent performances, such as large spe-cific surface area, high porosity,connected hos,controllable pore size, low density,et al., itwas applied to the distillation process.Three types of novel packings were developed,suchas palte,cylinder and composite aluminum foam packings.The hydrodynamics and mass transfer experiments of plate packing and cylinderpacking were performed in a column with an internal diameter of30mm.Experimental re-sults show that the pressure drop rises with the increase of spray density，F-factor and ref-lux ratio.The F-factor and gas velocity of flooding point decrea with increase fo spray den-sity.The HETP decrease with reflux ratio under the same gas velocity.Under the same refluxratio,HETP increase with F-factor.The number of theoretical plates may reach about10atexperimental condition.The plate packing and cylinder packing possess good mass transferperformance and easier to install than traditional random packings.But the application isrestricted because of poor hydrodynamic performance,such as high pressure drop，prone toflooding.So the packings are applicable for the hard separation system and isotope separa-tion.The hydrodynamics and mass transfer efficiency experiments were carried out in acolumn with with an internal diameter of75mm.Results show that the pressure drop ofcomposite packing is lower than plate packing and cylinder packing. But the mass transferefficiency is better.The number of theoretical plates may reach more than12.Compare theHETP of composite packing with those of other traditional structured packings,it becomesclear that the composite packing is appropriate for isotope separation and precise distilla-tion under low gas velocity.The influences of liquid film were considered based on the BRFmodel and parameters gand lrelated to liquid resistance were put forward.The valuesofk gandk lgained by using lest-squares method with experimental results.For the mixtureof p-xylene and o-xylene,the new model has better simulation results when F-factor is morethan0.15.