282d Hydrodynamics Modeling of Modern Catalytic Structured Packings

Elisabetta Brunazzi, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Chimica, Chimica Industriale e Scienza dei Materiali, Università di Pisa, Via Diotisalvi 2, Pisa, Italy and Ricardo Macías-Salinas, ESIQIE-Departamento de Ingeniería Química, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, UPALM, Av. IPN s/n, Col. Lindavista, México, D.F., 07738, Mexico.

Few modeling efforts have been so far presented in the open literature in an attempt to interpret and reproduce the hydrodynamics behavior of a relatively new family of catalytic structured packings: KATAPAK-SP. The purpose of this work is to present a new hydrodynamic model based on the channel approach for the accurate correlation and/or prediction of pressure drop and liquid holdup under single- and two-phase flow conditions. In this context, a more suitable liquid holdup correlation for the open channels was proposed. Moreover, a new approach has been devised here to reasonably determine the liquid share between the open channels and the catalyst bags.