Structured Packings Importance in Distillation, Absorption and Other Refining Pr

Posted by EWeb Solutions on November 25th, 2016

The structured packing is used in various types of processes involving distillation, absorption, and reactive distillation. The packing type is used in various industries involving gas processing, chemical processing, and crude oil separation. It provides easy solution for the most difficult separation of the components. The Gauze packing is one of the types of the structured packing used in industries to ensure high degree of distillation. The pattern of the packing is in the form of the criss cross corrugated sheets to ensure the flow of the vapor phase. The size of the structured packaging can be customized as per the industrial requirement. It has large capacity and can effectively attain low pressure drop. The criss cross packaging of the column gives a honeycomb like structure with elevated flow channels that provides a wider surface for the liquid to flow inside the column under low resistance to gas flow.

The azeotropic distillation are also available in plastic and is widely used in areas where low liquid load has been employed for the extraction of components. The efficiency of the structures packing is regulated under mainly two factors which include is the operational capacity, which refers to the rise of the fluid in the column and second id the pressure. The packing that can ensure the effective pressure drop is the ideal to be used in extraction column. The column is commonly used in the separation of the solute using liquid liquid extraction process. The extraction columns are mainly constructed in three forms.

Mixer-settlers: It is used for separation of solute present in a large volume of liquid and large vessel is required to accommodate the solution.

Contacting column: It is the most widely used column in the liquid liquid extraction methods. The column is fitted with the trays which provide enough surface area to allow the mixing of two solvents.

Centrifugal Contractors are an ideal extraction column where the components required to be separated differ only by the density of 4% or even less. The column imparts high degree of accuracy in separation of the process.

The material used in the construction of the fractional distillation are Stainless steels, Carbon steel, Hastelloy, monel, aluminum, copper-bronze, brass, titanium, nickel, etc, as per the application demand. The most common application of the structure packing is in the areas of Pharmaceuticals, alcohol, esters, fatty acids and derivatives, flavors ad flagrancies, solvent recovery, fouling services and pilot plants.