the packed tower, in which two fluids flowing in opposite directions enable a chemical component to be transferred from one fluid phase to the other, occurs in almost all chemical plants. the process may be gas absorption,distillation,solvent extraction or chemical reaction. A knowledge of the characteristics of both fluid flow and of mass transfer in such towers in necessary for both plant operators and designers.
the Armfield Gas Absorption apparatus has been designed to allow these studies to be made,and the instrumentation and layout anables students to follow both the hydrodynamic characteristics in the absence of mass transfer,and also,separately,to advise the performance of the mass transfer process involved in gas absorption. the size of the equipment has been chosen so that experiments may be completed in a typical laboratory class period,while at the same time being capeble of demonstrating full scale plant behaviour. Considerable attention is directed towards matters of safety which is of crucial importance in the process industries.