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Plate Pack Coalescers Design
Plate Pack Coalescers Design
Plate Pack Coalescers contain numerous parallel plates at a fixed angle, the
angle being dependent on the operational duty, the process fluids, and
whether solids are present. Due to the fact that the flow between the plates
lies in the laminar regime, smaller droplets can be separated than would be
achieved by gravity alone. Furthermore, since the distance the dispersed
phases have to travel to the plate surfaces is small, the residence times
required for effective separation and, consequently, the vessel size, can be
reduced, for a similar efficiency to that obtained with a gravity-settlement
system.
It should also be noted that Plate Pack Coalescers, when installed with a
well-designed baffling system, have very good motion dampening
capabilities, enabling their use to counter surface waves in separation
equipment. For this reason, they are often employed on Floating Production
Units (FPUs).
Advantages of a Plate Pack Coalescer:
For a plate pack with perpendicular gap spacing of dpp, the hydraulic diameter is
approximately equal to 2 dpp. Transition to turbulent flow occurs in the Re range of
1,000 to 1,500.
To determine the drop size that can be removed, consider the schematic in Fig. 1 of an
oil droplet rising in a waterflow between plates. The distance a drop has to settle is
dpp/cos(α), where dpp is the perpendicular spacing of the plate, and α is the inclination
angle. For liquids with “nonsticky” solids, the plate spacing and the angle of inclination
can be increased to mitigate plugging.
Fig. 1—Depiction of droplet rising between parallel plates (courtesy of CDS Separation
Technologies Inc.).
For the plate pack to be effective, the drop must reach the plate before exiting the pack.
A ballistic model of the drop results in
For a low-drop Reynolds number, the drop/rise velocity is given by Stokes’ law, which is
written as
and
Do = drop diameter, m.
For a higher-drop Reynolds number, a more general form of Eq. 3 can be used. For a
given plate-pack geometry and fluid conditions, the minimum drop that can be
removed by the plate pack is obtained from Eqs. 2 and 3.
For water drops in oil, the water viscosity in Eq. 4 is replaced with the oil viscosity, and
the horizontal velocity is that of the oil phase. Typical design drop size removal in plate
packs is approximately 50 μm.
Other designs use mesh and matrix packing for liquid/liquid coalescing. However,
plugging issues should be addressed when selecting the coalescer. In general, if solids
are present in significant quantities, no coalescing internals are installed.
Nomenclature
dh =hydraulic diameter
L =plate-pack length, m
Do =drop diameter, m