(505e) Stripping Methanol From a High Viscosity System by a Rotating Packed Bed

With the trait of high mass transfer coefficient in an rotaing packed bed (RPB), the bottle neck of stripping methanol from viscous glycerol solution could be improved. The gas flow rate, liquid flow rate, rotor speed, liquid viscosity, temperature, and liquid concentration were taken into consideration as the operating variables to pursue better stripping ratio and mass transfer coefficient in the system. According to the experimental results of 2% and 8% (methanol/glycerol) data sets, as the rotor speed increased from 1200 to 2400 rpm, gas flow rate increased from 40 to 50 L/min, and temperature increased from 30 to 60°C, the stripping ratio could be raised to 3.4 folds. As considering the ratio of (gas flow rate/liquid flow rate) in 0.5% data, we could find that while the liquid flow rate decreased from 200 to 100 mL/min, there would be a higher ratio of (gas flow rate/liquid flow rate) and a higher capacity to remove methanol from the liquid phase to gas phase. Thus the stripping efficiency could be found to be doubled. On the other hand, equilibrium constant became triple by increasing temperature from 30 to 60°C, and 2~3 times of stripping efficiency was obtained. In this research, a correlation applicable to both aqueous and viscous systems is presented.