Types of Packing Materials

December 8, 2016Krunal Shah

Types of Packing materials

The principal requirements of a packing are that it should:

 Provide a large surface area: a high interfacial area between the gas and liquid.
 Have an open structure: low resistance to gas flow.
 Promote uniform liquid distribution on the packing surface.
 Promote uniform vapour gas flow across the column cross-section.
Many diverse types and shapes of packing have been developed to satisfy these requirements.
They can be divided into two broad classes:

1. Packings with a regular geometry: such as stacked rings, grids and proprietary structured
packings.
2. Random packings: rings, saddles and proprietary shapes, which are dumped into the column and
take up a random arrangement.
Grids have an open structure and are used for high gas rates, where low pressure drop is essential; for
example, in cooling towers. Random packings and structured packing elements are more commonly
used in the process industries.

Structured Packing

Structured packing are characterized by a very effective technique and a versatile range of applications.
the packings offers high separation efficiency, good wettability and low pressure drop. they can be
adapted to address any functional problem for distillation, absorption or solvent extraction.
The term structured packing refers to packing elements made up from wire mesh or perforated metal
sheets. The material is folded and arranged with a regular geometry, to give a high surface area with a
high void fraction. A typical example is shown in Figures, Structured packings are produced by a
number of manufacturers.

The basic construction and performance of the various proprietary types available are similar. The
advantage of structured packings over random packing is their low HETP (typically less than 0.5 m) and
low pressure drop (around 100 Pa/m). They are being increasingly used in the following applications:

1. For difficult separations, requiring many stages: such as the separation of isotopes.
2. High vacuum distillation.
3. For column revamps: to increase capacity and reduce reflux ratio requirements.
The applications have mainly been in distillation, but structured packings can also be used in absorption;
in applications where high efficiency and low pressure drop are needed. The cost of structured packings
per cubic metre will be significantly higher than that of random packings, but this is offset by their
higher efficiency.

The manufacturers’ technical literature should be consulted for design data. A review of the types
available is given by Butcher (1988). Generalised methods for predicting the capacity and pressure drop
of structured packings are given by Fair and Bravo (1990) and Kister and Gill (1992). The use of
structured packings in distillation is discussed in detail in the book by Kister (1992). This packing
structure results in large interfacial areas and provides an intimate contact between the gas and liquid
phase. An exact adaptation to the respective requirements is ensured by special internals such as liquid
distributors, flash equipment, liquid collector trays and vapour distributors. All these internals are
carefully adapted to the packings and to the problem to be solved. They are subject to a permanent
quality control. Presently, the structured packing are used in most of all the following applications
-ethereal oils
-isomer mixtures
-fatty acids
-fatty alcohols
-deodorizing of edible oils
-degassing of transformer oils
-pilot columns
-essential oils
-isomer mixtures
-vitamins
-fatty acids
-fatty alcohols
-isocyanates
-vacuum columns
-normal and high-pressure columns
-absorption of components and pollutants from gas and air flows
-natural gas drying with glycols
-refinery columns (atmospheric and under vacuum)
-petrochemical columns
-exhaust air washing in aluminum rolling mills
-recovery of lube and rolling oil
-wastewater treatment with stripping columns
-revamping existing tray or random rings columns to improve the performance and capacity

Random Packings

Various types of random packings are used with packed towers, Most commonly used random packings
are Pall Rings, Berl saddles, Intalox saddles, Raschig rings, Tellerettes, Hypac etc. the structure of this
packings are shown in figures below.
Pall rings are most preferred and commonly use random packing but their cost per unit volume is high.
Pall Rings required minimum diameter and minimum height for the given absorption or distillation duty
as compared to other types of the random packings. Pall rings are available in metal and plastics.

For high temperature services Polypropylene or polyethylene pall rings can’t be used. Plastic packings
are also attacked by some organic solvents. For corrosive services, ceramic Berl saddle are cheaper than
metallic pall rings.
For example, in the distillation of the mixture of phosphorous tri chloride and phosphorous oxychloride,
Packed tower with ceramic packing used. Ceramics become brittle at high temperature and have poor
strength so at very high temperature and corrosive services, Glass lined column with glass Rasching
rings are preferred against packed column of special alloy.

for an example, in vacuum distillation of concentrated nitric acid by using sulfuric acid as solvent, glass
packed tower with glass rasching rings are used. Rasching rings are the cheapest packing materials but
have least efficiency so they required maximum diameter of column as well as maximum height of
column so sometimes the total cost of column goes high. Diameter of tower is recommended to be more
that 10 times the packing size