DEVELOPMENT OF PACKINGS AND THEIR OPTIMAL SURFACE GEOMETRIES - STATE-OF-THE-ART

There is a growing demand in industry for contact elements of the kind used in mass and heat transfer processes. It has been responsible for further development of established forms of packing and for new developments in packed beds arranged at random or in fixed geometric patterns. Comprehensive experimental and theoretical studies have revealed the factors that decide the performance of these packings and the limits of their development. It can thus be clearly demonstrated that technical measures impose limits on the improvements in efficiency that can be achieved. On thc basis of costs considerations, combined with the results of performance studies, the paper shows how optimum geometric area of a dumped or arranged packings can be determined.