Abstract:
The purpose of this work is to study the mass transfer of oxygen from a gas phase to water in three types of columns: a bubble column, a bubble column with movable solid media, and a packed column. Every column has the same diameter and height of 20 and 80 cm, respectively. The experiment consisted of four parts; the first experiment was performed in a bubble column with different flow rates of water and gas. The orifice size and the number of the sparger were also varied in the range of 0.4-1.2 mm and 19-38 holes. The result indicated that the mass transfer of the orifice size of 0.4 mm was the highest among other orifice sizes. Besides, the higher number of holes also produced smaller bubbles having lower velocities of bubbles, leading to higher gas hold up and a larger specific interfacial area. However, when the small orifice size was used, higher power consumption was required. The second experiment was performed in a bubble column with the addition of plastic media. There were 4 types of media used in the column; pall ring, cascade mini ring, intralox saddle, and raschig ring. All of the packings were varied in sizes and concentrations at 25, 38, and 50 mm as well as 1 and 2.5 % by total liquid volume, respectively. The results indicated that the 25 mm pall ring with 2.5% by volume yield a higher mass transfer coefficient when used with large orifice size. However, when used with the small orifice size, the mass transfer coefficient decreased and a high power consumption was achieved. The third experiment was performed in a packed column where it was found that the increase of the liquid flow rate increased the mass transfer when 25 mm pall ring was used. In addition, it was also found that the packed column spent less power consumption than those of the bubble columns. Lastly, the experiment was performed using the optimal conditions of every column to treat benzene contaminated air at 1000 ppm where water was used as the liquid phase. The result indicated that the bubble column could remove VOCs at 43 -75%, which was larger than the packed column but the higher power consumption was also required.