Gas‐liquid reactions in packed beds: The effectiveness of static hold‐up in presence of gas side resistance

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The interfacial area in a packed bed may be divided into two parts, i.e. the interfacial area corresponding to the dynamic hold‐up and that corresponding to the static hold‐up. The effectiveness of the latter for gas absorption with a chemical reaction can become quite low due to the depletion of the liquid phase reactant in the static hold‐up. As a result, the effective interfacial area may become substantially smaller. This aspect has been investigated earlier for liquid phase controlled absorption with a chemical reaction. In this paper, a procedure is developed for calculating the effectiveness of the interfacial area of the static hold‐up for the case of significant gas‐side mass transfer resistance for a second‐order chemical reaction. It is shown that the gas‐side mass transfer resistance increases the effectiveness of the static hold‐up. The results are presented in a convenient graphical form. It is shown that under certain conditions this effectiveness is quite sensitive to the magnitude of the gas‐side mass transfer resistance. The analysis presented here is based on the film theory.