(381t) Research Concept for the Development of Novel Additively Manufactured Structured Packings

Additive manufacturing as a fundamental new way of manufacturing offers the opportunity to realise novel shapes of separation equipment and apparatuses. Optimizing the specific shape of equipment can, in turn, result in the intensification of the separation process, leading to environmental and economic advantages. Therefore, additive manufacturing offers great potential for the chemical industry, especially in applications where the shape of the equipment determines the process performance in a fundamental way. Such an application are structured packings which are widely applied in distillation columns.

Structured packings are used to intensify the mass transfer between the liquid and vapour phase within the distillation column. Besides maximized separation efficiency, minimal pressure drop and maximal capacity are essential packing parameters in leading to a successful distillation process. Improvements of these characteristics directly affect the performance of the distillation column. The mentioned parameters are directly correlated to the flow conditions of the gas and liquid phase, which are in turn strongly affected by the shape of the structured packing. For this reason, the shape of structured packings has been of research interest for decades, but previous developments were restricted by the limitations of conventional manufacturing methods. Additive manufacturing as an innovative manufacturing process now makes it possible to realise novel structures which are not feasible to manufacture with conventional methods due to their complexity. Accordingly, the main research goals of this work are the systematic identification of novel shapes of structured packings and the realisation of these packings by additive manufacturing.

The research concept incorporates a close interconnection of computer based methods and experiments. Different shapes of structured packings are designed and their key parameters, like pressure drop and liquid distribution, are determined via computational fluid dynamics. The packings are additively manufactured and examined in hydrodynamic and distillation experiments. The experimental results are in turn used for the validation of the simulations. In a first step this is done with conventional packing shapes to set up the models and experiments. The second step will be the design and examination of novel packing shapes.

The research concept for the systematic development of novel additively manufactured structured packings is presented in detail on the poster. Also, first results are shown for conventional structures, which are the base for further research.