Interfacial area measurement in a Katapak™ SP12 catalytic distillation column using high energy X-ray CT

The use of X-ray tomography to visualize and quantify the gas-liquid interfacial area in modular catalytic distillation packing elements is put forward. X-ray tomography allows access to geometrical details in a non-intrusive way. The method used to determine the specific area of dry packing is applied to irrigated ones to determine the gas-liquid interfacial area. The gas-liquid interfacial area averaged over the column length increases with the liquid superficial velocity and slightly with the gas velocity. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 18th International Congress of Chemical and Process Engineering (Prague, Czech Republic 8/24-28/2008).