Performance Of New Rotating Bed With Radial Blades

The high-gravity rotating bed was a new type of chemical device that uses a centrifugal force field instead of a gravitational force field to intensify the momentum transfer,mass transfer,heat transfer and reaction process between multiphase flows.It has been used in distillation,extraction,absorption and other chemical processes.A new kind of high-gravity rotating bed—the rotating bed with radial blades—has been developed based on RZB and centrifugal fluid conveyor.The core component is a disc with several radial blades.The blades are evenly distributed at the circumference of the disk.To keep the liquid dispersed repeatedly,there are several groups of small holes on each blade.In this paper,the flow of gas and liquid in the rotating bed with radial blades were studied by the photography and CFD simulation.Then the pressure drop,effective power consumption and mass transfer performance of rotational bed with radial blades were investigated using water-air system and MEA-CO₂ system,respectively.Meanwhile,the semi-empirical pressure drop model and effective power consumption model were established.Finally,the rotating bed with radial blades was compared with combined rotating bed and rotating zigzag bed.The CFD simulation and photography results indicated that for rotating bed with radial blades,increasing the rotational speed was beneficial to the liquid dispersion by blades.The thickness of liquid film on the blade was thinner at the higher rotational speed and lower liquid flow rate.At the inner periphery of the rotor,the liquid distribution was relatively bad.Some liquid passed directly without being dispersed by the innermost holes.The result was the number of liquid dispersion times decreased.The pressure drop inside the rotor was the main part of the total pressure drop.The inlet gas velocity will affect the gas distribution in the rotating bed.According to the studies on the pressure drop and the effective power consumption of rotating bed with radial blades,the pressure drop increased with the increase of superficial gas velocity,rotational speed and specific liquid flow rate,respectively,and the effective power consumption increased with the increase of rotational speed and specific liquid flow rate.The average deviation of the calculated values of pressure drop model and effective power consumption model from experimental data were within10%,which indicated that the model can properly predict pressure drop and effective power consumption.The mass transfer experimental results showed that the number of theoretical plates of rotating bed with radial blades increased with the increase of rotational speed and specific liquid flow rate,however gradually decreased with the increase of superficial gas velocity.Among the three different rotating beds,RZB showed the best mass transfer performance with lower effective power consumption for the same task.The combined rotating bed had the lowest pressure drop per theoretical plate.The mass transfer performance of rotating bed with radial blades was slightly inferior to the other two.Based on the experimental research and CFD simulation,the hydrodynamic performance,mass performance and effective power consumption of rotating bed with radial blades were obtained,which provided a basis for the improvement of rotor structure and the industrial applications of rotating bed with radial blades.