Numerical Investigations of the Effect of Packed Bed Porosity on the Flow Behavior

Packed columns are considered useful to a great extent in the distillation of natural gas, and liquid volume fraction is a critical parameter for their design. This study aimed to develop a geometrical model of a packed column with one cone spray to simulate the injection. Here, the commercial software FLUENT 6.3 was employed. CFD simulations using the mixture model coupled with several turbulence models were used to analyze the porosity effect on the fluid profiles. The results show that the decrease of the packed porosity resulted in a greater dispersion of the liquid, indicating the anisotropic behavior in the bed. Furthermore, the effect of different turbulence models was analyzed in order to study the atomizing of the liquid phase accurately. The numerical results were obtained to provide further insight into the mechanism of the distillation with volatile components.