(285a) Tower Scanning With Packview™ – A Quantitative Tool for Diagnosing Liquid Maldistribution in Packed Beds

The tower gamma scanning technique is well established in the process industries as a qualitative tool to help troubleshoot separation towers, both trayed and packed towers. In this presentation it will be shown that through careful and innovative application of the gamma scanning technique, quantitative information about the liquid distribution through packed beds in separation towers can be extracted.

For packed towers some form of a grid-scan, multiple vertical scans through packing, has been traditionally used to detect liquid mal-distribution through packing.  A new technique will be introduced whereby gamma scan data is used to determine relative process densities through packing.  Relative process densities can be converted into liquid holdup fractions, either of which can be used as a quantitative measure of liquid mal-distribution.  The concept will be applied to case studies to illustrate how quantifying gamma scan data can provide more useful information than by the traditional qualitative analysis.