Progress on Higee distillation—Introduction to a new device and its industrial applications

An Integrated Design Method for Rotating Packed Beds for Distillation

“…The centrifugal field is generated by a rotor consisting of different types of packing. Different types of RPBs including their benefits and drawbacks have comprehensively been reviewed by Wang et al (2011). The advantages of these RPBs, among others, are the intense mixing and quick mass transfer, the flexibility of the rotational speed and therefore of the separation efficiency as well as the high capacity at a very compact design.…”

A new crossflow rotating bed, Part 3: Stage efficiency model

“…While using the same size rotor, the optimized CRB showed a comparable mass transfer performance as RZB with much lower pressure drop. (Wang et al, 2011) As known to all, the mass-transfer efficiency is a crucial factor for all the gas-liquid contacting devices used in mass transfer processes, including CRB. The first step in the CRB design procedures is the determination of the number of theoretical stages required to satisfy the target separation task.…”

A review on process intensification in HiGee distillation

“…HiGee contactors operate in a high‐gravity field (100–1000 times gravity) in order to enhance mass‐transfer and throughput up to 1–2 orders of magnitude, allowing for a reduction in size of up to 10 times with respect to conventional packed columns for the same separation . This size reduction has been attributed to their higher volumetric mass‐transfer coefficients and intensified momentum and heat transfer rates due to the formation of thinner liquid films and smaller droplets which result in larger surface areas and improved micromixing performance with respect to conventional packed bed equipment, offering the possibility to use very high specific surface area packing.…”

“…Several papers discussing HiGee designs have been published so far, including multi‐stage spraying rotating packed bed, RPB with wave‐form disk packing, helical rotating absorber, RPB with split packing (SP‐RPB), rotating zigzag bed (RZB), two‐stage counter‐current rotating packed bed (TSCC‐RPB), blade‐packing rotating packed‐bed (BP‐RPB), counter‐flow concentric‐ring rotating bed, and cross‐flow concentric‐baffle rotating bed . This review paper provides an overview of the HiGee technology available both for gas–liquid mass‐transfer – with a special focus on distillation – and for heterogeneously catalyzed reactions.…”