Gas Cooling and Humidification: Design of Packed Towers from Small-Scale Tests

Abstract

On plants in which gases are processed, the gases are often brought into direct contact with water—usually in packed towers. The purpose may be to cool a hot gas, to increase the humidity of a gas, or, in the well-known special case of water-cooling towers, to cool water by contact with atmospheric air. These processes involve simultaneous transfers of sensible heat and water vapour, and existing methods of analysis are complex and laborious, except for the cooling of water, for which Merkel's total-heat method has long been available. Merkel's approximate solution offers the engineer a simple method of working out, for any operating conditions, the amount of heat transferred and the “driving force” available for transferring it. The present paper generalizes the total-heat method and, with a permissible sacrifice in accuracy, preserves the essential simplicity of the water-cooling treatment for gas-cooling and humidification processes. To complete the design of a packed tower, a knowledge is required of the characteristics of the packing. Information obtained in small towers is given for a number of packings, and a worked example shows how to apply the method of treatment, and the packing data presented, to the design of a large plant tower.