Pressure drop of arranged packings with vertical walls

Abstract Among the known types of packings, arranged packings with vertical walls have the lowest pressure drop for one transfer unit at comparable free volume as well as the highest efficiency at a given pressure drop. Reliable equations are derived for pressure drop determination in industrial apparatuses filled with this kind of packing. The pressure drop is presented as a sum of two terms-pressure drop (in the vertical channels) of the packing rows themselves and local pressure drop of the boundary sections between the rows. The experimental data for dry packing pressure drop, available in the literature and newly obtained, are described by new equation with mean deviation of 9.3%. Equations for determination of wetted packings pressure drop up to the loading point and above it are obtained, too. The proposed equations can also be used to determine the loading point.