Investigation of effective interfacial area in a rotating packed bed with structured stainless steel wire mesh packing

•Four structured stainless steel wire mesh packings were designed and built.•Gas-liquid mass transfer interface area in the RPB was investigated.•Utilization ratio of packing's specific surface area in the RPB was presented.•A modified correlation for the effective interfacial area of the RPB was proposed.

Packing plays an important role on the mass transfer and mixing in a rotating packed bed (RPB) which is regarded as an important gas-liquid reactor or contactor for process intensification. Stainless steel wire mesh packing exhibits good mass transfer performance when applied in a RPB. However, its construction repeatability and mechanical strength should be improved. Therefore, we introduced and designed a novel structured stainless steel wire mesh packing, aiming to overcome the above problems. In this work, the effective interfacial area (ae) in the packing and cavity zones of a RPB with four different types of structured stainless steel wire mesh packings was investigated at various rotational speeds, gas flow rates, and liquid flow rates by using a NaOH-CO2 mass transfer system. A brief analysis of the gas-liquid mass transfer interface area (A) and utilization ratio of packing's specific surface area (wp) is presented. A modified correlation for the effective interfacial area in the packing zone of the RPB with structured stainless steel wire mesh packing was also proposed, and the predicted values were found to be in agreement with the experimental values with deviations generally within ±15%.