06-361 page 139 Spring, 2001 Chapter 14. Gas Absorption/Stripping me AB gas abs gas absorption -- 2 components of a gas are separated by contact with "ig & liquid (in which one component is preferentially soluble) stripplag -- 2 components of a liquid are separated by contact with a &8C gas fe ining AB ‘An example of gas absomtion is the removal of ammonia from air by contact with liquid water. ‘Ammonia is very soluble in water whereas air is only es slightly soluble. f Both gas absorption and stripping involve at least ra three components. Usually only one of these ait components crosses the phase boundary. In the ” ~'—— 7 ? example of ammonia and air, ammonia is the = component whose molar flowrate changes by the largest percentage of the inlet value. Although some air will ako dissolve in water, and some water will ‘evaporate into the air, the molar flowrates of air and ‘water change by negligible fractions: their flows can usually be considered constant These are the two main differences between them and distillation: 1) at least 3 components, and 2) often only “one transferrable component". By constrast, in distillation, all of the components are present in both phases. veh EQUIPMENT FOR ABSORPTION/STRIPPING Although liquid and gas streams for absorption or stripping could be contacted using a tray column (like that used in distillation), tray columns are seldom used, The reason is that tray efficiencies are generally much lower for absorption and stripping than for distillation (perhaps only 5% instead of 50%). Because of this very low efficiency, very large numbers of trays are required -- perhaps i00' or 1000's. Fabrication costs just become prohibitively expensive. Fortunately, a viable alternative exists: the packed tower.06-361 page 140 Spring, 2001 A packed tower is simply a tube or pipe, which is filled with some sort of “packing.” The packing typically consists of particles around an inch in diameter. In commercial packed towers, the usual choice are particles with one of three different shapes: SAS Cape ges gy tes mt iS a ase ey Lj sevens iii eres et ico ey * raschig ring (which is just a piece of pipe which has been cut into seaments, whose length and diameter are about the same) L=De to 14 inches Es 2 ids © Berl saddle Pall ring Although, in a pinch, almost anything you have laying around would do -- ping-pong balls, golf balls, etc. ‘The pumpose of the packing is to promote good contact between the liquid and vapor streams which are being brought together to permit interfacial mass transfer. The liquid stream is usually fed into the top of the tower while the vapor is fed into the bottom. ‘Thus we have countercurrent flow of the two streams, which has the same advantages for mass transfer as it did for heat transfer. ‘The packing promotes good contact between the phases by dividing the two feed streams into ‘many parallel interconnected paths. Ideally, you would like the liquid to flow downward as a thin film over the surface of the packing. This would give the maximum surface area of contact between the gas and liquid. If you just pour the liquid from the end of the pipe onto the top of the packing in tower having much larger diameter than the pipe, most of the packing will not even be wet. Only some of the channels will be carrying flow. This is called:06-361 page 141 Spring, 2001 channeling - maldistribution of liquid flow Fig 622. Ligald dtu and packing inate Fig (21 sennmyh lp dr. The nee Sts Senet (a) Inadequate; (b} adequate. ‘Conpany.) ee So some sort of device to distribute the flow over the entire cross section of the tower is needed. ‘This device is called a distributor. Even if the flow is evenly distributed at the top of tower, channeling might still develop as the fluid trickles down, When two thin films converge they tend for form a thick film and a dry atch, which results in a reduction in contact area. So redistributors are placed every 10-15 feet ‘along the length of the tower. A TYPICAL ABSORBER DESIGN PROBLEM ‘To motivate the next few lectures, let's pose a typical design problem, For this example, I'm going to take Prob, 22-1 from McCabe, Smith & Harriott, ‘water with Problem: treat 500 SCFM of air containing ' 0.02% acetone 14 mol% acetone to remove 95% of the ee acetone by absorption in liquid water in a . . packed bed operating at 80°F and 1 atm, ne with I-inch raschig rings. The feed water contains 0.02% acetone and the flowrate is, 1.1 times the minimum, 3500 SCEN recover 95% air containing cheese ‘The partial pressure of acetone over an [+ mol% acetone aqueous solution at 80°F can be calculated from pa=Phy axa where Iny 4 =1.95(1-x)° where PJ = 0.33 atm is the vapor pressure of acetone at 80°F, As the designer, you must select the following: