Liquid Flow Morphology of Viscous Systems in Structured Packings: Investigations by X-ray Tomography

In the modeling of gas-liquid separation processes in structured packings, fluid dynamics is often reduced to a
uniform liquid film flow over the packing surface. However, previous experiments with X-ray tomography
indicate that this assumption is not valid when the liquid-phase viscosity is significantly higher than 1 mPa s. In
order to improve existing modeling approaches for viscous systems, a better understanding of the influence of
the liquid viscosity on the liquid flow inside the structured packing is necessary. In this work, X-ray tomography
is used to investigate the flow morphology of liquid systems with low surface tension and a viscosity up to
50 mPa s. An empirical correlation that describes the hold-up fraction of the existing flow patterns is given and
a modelling approach is proposed that allows to consider the influence of the different flow patterns on mass
transfer.