EVALUATION OF THE ABSORPTION OF SULFUR DIOXIDE IN WATER USING THREE TYPES OF STRUCTURED PACKING

摘要

In order to determine the height of a separation colu mn, hydrodynamic and mass transfer models are necessary to evaluate the pressure drop and the height of the global mass transfer u nit. Starting from experimental values, such adjusted models have shown a high level of accuracy, confirming the validity and merit of different systems and packings. The present work evaluates SO2 absorption in a water-based process. The absorption column uses three kinds of mesh corrugated structured packing, one developed in the Mexican National Institute of Nuclear Research (ININ, for its acronym in Spanish) and other similar packings, named Sulzer BX and Mellapak. The optimization was made applying a Two Film model, which is based on the number of global mass transfer units, involving the separation efficiency as a function of the height of a global transfer unit. A comparison of the height of the mass transfer unit on gas film and liquid film was made with respect to the equilibrium line slope, for the three packings considered. The results for the pressure drop, mass transfer coeficients and heigth of the mass transfer unit show a high influence of the estimated value on the separation efficiency from the slope equilibrium line. The deviation of the estimated values from the experimental data is 10%. The Sulzer BX packing showed higher separation efficiency than the ININ and Mellapak packing. These results allow the modification of several parameters of the structured packing, in order to achieve a fitting geometric specification for a very specific s eparation-process application.