Dry Pressure Drop in a Two-Rotor Rotating Packed Bed

Because of the centrifugal field in rotating packed beds (RPB), a process intensification of gas-liquid mass transfer takes place. While two-rotor RPBs offer a great potential to increase the separation performance, compared to one-rotor RPBs, there is a lack of fundamental understanding of hydrodynamics and mass transfer in two-rotor RPBs. To bridge that gap, systematic experimental approaches are needed to derive correlations for mass transfer and hydrodynamic behavior. The current article presents a detailed analysis of dry pressure drop (Delta p(total)) by measurements with different rotor configurations (one-rotor RPB vs two-rotor RPB) equipped with metal foam as packing and operating conditions at F-factors (F-G) up to 4.9 Pa-0.5 and rotational speeds (n(rot)) up to 1200 rpm at T = 293.15 K and p = 1 atm. Based on the Delta p(total) of a one-rotor RPB, a correlation was proposed for Delta p(total) of a two-rotor RPB as a function of F-G and n(rot). The correlation allows predicting Delta p(total )of two-rotor RPB for F-G up to 3.5 Pa-0.5, using the data of the one-rotor RPB only.