(188e) A Potential Application of Ceramic Foam Material to Distillation: Structured Corrugation Foam Packing

This paper describes the application of SiC ceramic foam to distillation. SiC ceramic foam structured packing was developed according to the structured of corrugated packing. The hydrodynamic performance parameters including pressure drop for dry and wet packing, flooding F factor, and liquid holdup were determined in a plexiglass tower of 100 mm internal diameter. The mass transfer efficiency was measured in another glass tower of 100 mm internal diameter by total reflux experiments, using a mixture of n-heptane and cyclohexane at atmospheric pressure. The experimental results show SiC ceramic foam structured packing has low dry and wet pressure drop, high flooding F factor, liquid hold-up and mass transfer efficiency, when it compared with monolithic foam packing(same material but different structure) and BX gauze packing (same structure but different material). Besides, the influence of specific area, corrugated dip angle, foam diameter, corrugated thickness on SiC ceramic foam structured packing were also researched in order to optimize this new kind of packing and laid the foundation for industrial application.