Development and performance characterisation of a novel gas–liquid contacting stage

This project has been concerned with the development and performance testing of a novel gas liquid contacting stage with potential for use in stage-wise mass transfer processes such as gas absorption or distillation. The contactor employs the principal of co-current flow of the two phases within each stage whilst maintaining counter-current flow over a column consisting of many such stages. Each stage consists of an entraining section, in which the liquid is entrained into the up flowing gas, and a disentraining section situated above this in which the liquid droplets are separated from the gas, collected and passed to the entraining section of the stage beneath. The primary advantage of this contactor over conventional equipment such as packed or tray columns is the much higher allowable gas velocity, which would allow narrower columns to be constructed for a given duty. [Continues.]