International Society for Industrial Process Tomography

Evaluation of Liquid Hold-up in a Rotating Packed Bed for High Gravity Fluid Separation using Process-Synchronized Gamma-Ray Computed Tomography

Kai Groß^1,*, André Bieberle², Konrad Gladyszewski¹, Markus Schubert²,
Mirko Skiborowski¹, Uwe Hampel^2,3, Andrzej Górak¹

¹Technische Universität Dortmund, Laboratory of Fluid Separations,
Emil-Figge-Straße 70, 44227 Dortmund, Germany
²Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Institute of Fluid Dynamics,
Bautzener Landstraße 400, 01328 Dresden, Germany
³AREVA Endowed Chair of Imaging Techniques in Energy and Process Engineering,
Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany.

^*Email: kai.gross@tu-dortmund.de

ABSTRACT

A Rotating Packed Bed (RPB) is a compact and flexible fluid separation equipment, which utilizes a centrifugal forces to achieve enhanced mass and energy transfer between a liquid and a vapour phase, brought in contact within a porous rotating packing. In order to perform a reliable design and scale-up of RPBs, detailed knowledge about the hydrodynamics and flow mechanisms within the equipment is strongly required. However, due to the non-transparent solid casing, such insight cannot be generated by common analytics. In the present study, liquid hold-up and gas-liquid phase distribution are determined in a porous metal foam packing of 450 mm diameter installed in a pilot-scale RPB using a high-energetic gamma-ray computed tomography (CT). The CT system consists of an isotopic source Cs137 and an in-house developed radiation detector comprising 320 scintillation detector elements operated in photon counting mode in order to detect each single gamma photon. In particular, the liquid hold-up distribution and the lateral spreading behaviour is visualized and analysed relative to the motion of the rotating packing applying conventional CT scanning and a time-averaged angular-resolved CT scanning procedure, respectively.

Keywords Fluid Separation, High Gravity Equipment, Rotating Packed Beds, Gamma-Ray Computed Tomography, Process-Synchronized Imaging

Industrial Application Chemical industry