Modeling of the Precipitation Process in a Rotating Packed Bed and Its Experimental Validation

A mixing-precipitation model based on the modified coalescence-redispersion model was presented to describe the flow, mixing, nucleation and growth in a rotating packed bed (RPB). The model was coupled with population balance, mass balance and crystallization kinetics. It predicted well the influence of coalescence probability, which represents the mixing intensity among droplets, on the particle number density, supersaturation and mean particle size of the produced precipitates. The effects of the radial thickness of packing, liquid flow rate and rotating speed on the product particle size were also investigated. The results indicate that the needed radial length of packing is short for sparingly soluble substance precipitation (about 40-50 mm in this work), and the mean particle size of precipitates decreases with the increase of rotating speed and liquid flow rate, respectively. The validity of this model was verified by experiment on BaSO4 precipitation in RPB.