Improved gas'liquid contacting in co‐current flow

A new method of increasing interfacial area for gas‐liquid contacting in co‐current flow using screen packings has been evaluated in a 51/2‐in. I. D. column using CO 2 chemisortpion in sodium hydroxide solution and CO 2 physical desorption from water. The study investigated the effect of gas velocity (0.3‐2.7‐ft/sec.), liquid velocity (0.018‐0.1‐ft/sec), and of column height (0.67‐7.8‐ft.) on the interfacial area, a , and the physical desorption liquid phase mass transfer coefficient, K L . The two types of screen packing tested produced interfacial areas of 2 to 4 times that generated in an unpacked column. K L showed no effect of gas velocity but increased with liquid velocity, a and K L decreased with increasing column height. Generally, photographic evaluation gave unrealistically high values of a .