Experimental investigation of liquid holdup in structured packings

Liquid holdup is an important hydrodynamic parameter for characterizing the gas/liquid flow pattern in packed beds. In this paper, a study of liquid holdup in 3 different structured packings: Mellapak 2X from Sulzer, Koch-Glitsch Flexipac 2Y HC, and Montz-Pak B1-250M is presented, using air/water, air/water/sugar solutions with liquid viscosity up to 12 cP and air/30 wt% MEA in a 0.5 m ID absorption column with a packing height of 5 m. As expected, at a given liquid load, the liquid holdup was close to constant as a function of gas flow, with an increase at high gas velocities. In general, the Sulzer packing had a higher liquid holdup than observed in the two other packings. A possible explanation for this could be the lack of enhanced draining of liquid as seen with the modifications of the end-section of the Koch-Glitsch and Montz packings. Liquid holdup was found to increase with increasing liquid viscosity. The influence was higher at high liquid load than at low liquid load. Our results indicate a higher dependency at high liquid load and a lower at low liquid load. There was a reasonable agreement between our results and the data found in the literature.