Journal of Applied Mathematics
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 917650, 17 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/917650
Research Article

Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation of Multiphase Flow in Structured Packings

Saeed Shojaee,1 Seyyed Hossein Hosseini,2 and Behzad Saeedi Razavi3

1Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan 98164-161, Iran
2Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Ilam University, Ilam 69315-516, Iran
3Institute of Standard and Industrial Research of Iran, Khorasan Razavi 9185837733, Iran

Received 29 November 2011; Revised 6 March 2012; Accepted 7 March 2012

Academic Editor: Fu-Yun Zhao

Copyright © 2012 Saeed Shojaee et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

A volume of fluid multiphase flow model was used to investigate the effective area and the created liquid film in the structured packings. The computational results revealed that the gas and liquid flow rates play significant roles in the effective interfacial area of the packing. In particular, the effective area increases as the flow rates of both phases increase. Numerical results were compared with the Brunazzi and SRP models, and a good agreement between them was found. Attention was given to the process of liquid film formation in both two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) models. The current study revealed that computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can be used as an effective tool to provide information on the details of gas and liquid flows in complex packing geometries.