Investigation of liquid flow pattern inside a structured packing using X-ray tomography

This work focuses on the analysis of X-ray tomographic images of liquid flow distribution within a 1 m high packed column of 10 cm diameter, filled with four Mellapak Plus 752Y elements. Tomographic measurements are performed at various column heights for different liquid flowrates. Water and aqueous glycerine solutions are successively used as working liquids in order to quantify the influence of liquid viscosity on the spatial distribution of hydrodynamic quantities such as liquid holdup and gas-liquid interfacial area. Logically, both liquid holdup and gas-liquid interfacial area increase with liquid flow rate. An increase of liquid viscosity has also a positive impact on liquid holdup and on gas-liquid interfacial area. In all cases, the measured quantities are not constant along the bed height, leading to fluctuating axial profiles. Depending on the liquid viscosity and flowrate, different liquid flow patterns (films, rivulets, flooded channels) are observed in the irrigated cross section images. A method based on morphological techniques is proposed to quantify the fraction of liquid flow which belongs to each flow pattern.