Investigation of mass transfer performance in an L-shaped pulsed sieve plate extraction column using axial dispersion model

This research revolves studying the mass transfer performance of an L-shaped pulsed sieve-plate extraction column using the axial dispersion model (ADM) for two chemical systems: water-acetone-toluene and water-acetone-butyl acetate with mass transfer d → c direction. The effects of operating parameters including pulsation intensity and flow rates of the dispersed and the continuous phases on the mass transfer performance are evaluated. According to the results, incrementing pulsation intensity increases the volumetric overall mass transfer coefficients in the horizontal section, whereas it slightly decreases the mass transfer coefficients in the vertical section. Furthermore, the axial dispersion coefficient of each phase is found to be mainly affected by the pulsation intensity and the flow rate of the phase itself. The continuous phase axial dispersion is found to be significantly higher than that of the dispersed phase. Finally, new empirical correlations are proposed for predicting the overall mass transfer and axial dispersion coefficients.