Additive manufacturing of packings for rotating packed beds

Abstract HIGEE technology and rotating packed beds (RPB) in specific, gained a lot of interest for industrial processes intensification in recent years. Yet, most of the investigations were restricted to wire meshes and foam packings, as manufacturing methods for commercial structured packings in column applications do not immediately meet the specific requirements in an RPB. The comparable low volume and unconventional form of the packing call for tailored packing designs for RPB application. To this end, additive manufacturing (AM) provides an excellent tool, which offers, almost unlimited flexibility combined with a high degree of control over the packing morphology. The current article promotes the application of AM for the development of RPB packings by demonstrating the feasibility of this approach through a comparison of commercial metal foam and a polymeric replica. The latter is produced by 3D printing with a digital light processing approach. The structure of the resulting packing presents an excellent representation of the developed model and is in very good agreement with the metal foam. A series of experiments investigating the mass transfer confirms strong similarities in the interfacial area, while additional pressure drop experiments indicate discrepancies in the pressure drop characteristics, which are likely caused by the different material properties.