packed bed is a hollow tube, pipe, or other vessel that is filled with a packing material.

The packing
can be randomly filled with small objects like Raschig rings or else it can be a specifically designed
structured packing. Packed beds may also contain catalyst particles or adsorbents such as zeolite
pellets, granular activated carbon, etc.

The purpose of a packed bed is typically to improve contact between two phases in a chemical or
separation process for achieving rapid mass and heat transfer, and particularly in the case of
fluidized beds, catalytic chemical reactions. Packed beds can be used in chemical reactors, scrubbers,
strippers, and absorbers.

Column structure: random and stacked packed columns

The column can be filled with random dumped packing (creating a random packed column) or with
structured packing sections, which are arranged or stacked (creating a stacked packed column). In
the column, liquids tend to wet the surface of the packing and the vapors pass across this wetted
surface, where mass transfer takes place. Packing material can be used instead of trays to improve
separation in distillation columns. Packing offers the advantage of a lower pressure drop across the
column, which is beneficial while operating under vacuum. Differently shaped packing materials
have different surface areas and void space between the packing. Both of these factors affect
packing performance.

Types of Packing

Commercial packings are available in sizes of 3 mm to about 75 mm. Packing with high void spaces
(about 65-95%) are characteristics of good packing because it permits a large amount of liquid to
pass countercurrent to the gas flow through the packing openings. In addition, the high void spaced
packings have relatively low pressure drops for the gas.[1]

There are three types of packing material:

1. Ceramic: Superior wettability, corrosion resistance at elevated temperatures, bad strength

2. Metal: Superior strength & good wettability

3. Plastic: Good strength, but poor wettability at low liquid rates, inexpensive
Cermaic Raschig rings and Berl saddles are infrequently used as they are older types of packing. They
are relatively low cost, provide moderate pressure drops and are moderately efficient.

The packing that allows "through flow" have a moderate relative cost and low pressure drops
compared to the Raschig rings and Berl saddles. Pall rings are made of plastic or metal and have a
porosity (or void spaces) of 0.90 to 0.96 with areas of 100-200 m2. This packing is much more
efficient and is still used today.

Intalox packings are the latest models which are a combination of Berl saddle and Pall ring. The
Metal Tri-Pack is essentially a Pall ring but in spherical shape. These packings have a porosity range
from 0.95 to 0.98.

Pressure drop in packed beds

The Ergun equation can be used to predict the pressure drop along the length of a packed bed given
the fluid flow velocity, the packing size, and the viscosity and density of the fluid.

Other fluid issues that appear in packed beds involve the proper distribIt is assumed that the
column is uniformly packed with particles of mean diameter (which is exactly the diameter if
the particle is a sphere) and void fraction . The void fraction is defined as the volume of voids in
the bed divided by the total volume of the bed. Hence, is the volume fraction of particles
in the column. The average interstitial velocity in the column is denoted as and can be related
to the superficial velocity by
The superficial velocity is the velocity that the fluid would have if there was no packing in the
column, and is the velocity that is used for pressure correlations. The relationship between the
mass flow rate and superficial velocity is where is the cross-sectional area of the empty
column. To calculate the pressure drop, we rely on the following correlation attributed to Ergun.

which has a similar form for fluid flow in pipes, meaning that the friction factor for a packed
column is a function of . In this formulation, the friction factor is defined as

and the Reynolds number is defined as

Other fluid issues that appear in packed beds involve the proper distribution of the liquid
across the cross-section, and developing models of the velocity profile in the liquid film
around a piece of packing material so that heat/mass transfer calculations can be made.
Design of packing materials to achieve uniform distribution of the fluid across the cross-
section throughout the column is also an important subject.

The plate column is similar to the packed bed in terms of entrance and leaving of the vapor
and the liquid. This phenomena is same both in packed bed column and in plate columns.
However, in the design of packed bed, there are no trays but plate columns have
trays .