Heat transport in structured packings with co-current downflow of gas and liquid

Improvements in catalyst activity make the heat transport in fixed bed reactors increasingly important. Structured packings operated in two-phase flow are expected to outperform randomly packed beds, but heat transfer data on structured packings is scarce. In this work structured packings such as OCFS (Open Cross Flow Structures), CCFS (Closed Cross Flow Structures), knitted wire, and foam were characterised with respect to the heat transfer performance. A dedicated set-up was designed and built which enabled us to measure the heat transfer rates in two-phase flow at ambient pressure in the absence of reaction. Benchmarking and set-up validation was carried out using glass beads. The structured packings especially OCFS and CCFS show heat transfer coefficients that are superior over those of glass beads, at lower energy dissipation. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.