CFD Studies of Pressure Drop and Increasing Capacity in MellapakPlus 752.Y Structured Packing

Packed columns equipped with structured packings are widely used in separation processes. In this study, the hydrodynamics of MellapakPlus 752.Y was investigated using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach. This packing includes short smooth bends at both ends of each corrugated sheet. Two adjacent sheets of a whole packing module were considered as computational domain. The CFD results indicated that the gas phase should be simulated using a turbulent model for F factors higher than 0.8. Thus, various two-equation turbulence models were evaluated for the gas phase in the CFD model. It was shown that the baseline k-omega (BSL) model leads to a slightly improved prediction of the pressure drops compared with the experimental data. The effects of the bends on the structured packing were studied by the model. It was found that using bends in the packings is useful for increasing the capacity and decreasing the pressure drop of the systems.