Mass-transfer performance of rotating packed beds equipped with blade packings in VOCs absorption into water

This work examined the mass transfer of the rotating packed bed (RPB) equipped with blade packings using VOCs absorption. Ethanol, acetone and ethyl acetate were used as the model VOCs herein. The overall volumetric gas-side mass-transfer coefficient (KGa) for three VOCs absorption was observed to increase with the rotor speed, the gas flow rate and the liquid flow rate. Moreover, ethanol absorption provided the largest KGa values owing to the fact that the solubility of ethanol in water was highest among three VOCs. Also, an empirical correlation was developed, implying that the KGa values increased with the centrifugal acceleration to the power of 0.143 and the Henry's constant to the power of −0.230. It was analyzed that the gas-side mass-transfer coefficient (kG) was not affected by the rotor speed and the effective gas–liquid interfacial area (a) increased as a function of the rotor speed to the power of 0.55, implying that the increase in the effective gas–liquid interfacial area by the rotor speed provided the contribution to the enhancement of mass transfer by the centrifugal acceleration for VOCs absorption.