From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, the British Imperial Chemical Industry Corporation (ICI) successively put forward a number of patents named "Higee". Using the strong centrifugal force generated in the rotating packed bed-super gravity, the gas-liquid velocity and the specific surface area of the packing are greatly improved without flooding. Under the conditions of high dispersion, high turbulence, strong mixing and rapid interface renewal, liquid and gas contact at a relatively high speed in the curved channel, which greatly strengthens the mass transfer process. The height of mass transfer unit is reduced by 1 ~ 2 orders of magnitude, which shows many advantages that traditional equipment simply does not have. In this way, the huge tower becomes an overweight machine with a height of less than 2 meters. High gravity technology is considered as a breakthrough technology to strengthen the transfer and heterogeneous reaction process, and is known as "transistor in chemical industry" and "cross-century technology"
Centrifugal force field (super gravity field) has been used for phase separation for a long time, whether in daily life or industrial application.
1925, Myers made a conical sectional distillation of laurel with rotating body.
1933, Prakek invented a spiral gas-liquid contact device with closed sides, in which the liquid contacts with the gas flowing counter-current from inside to outside along the spiral plate. After several years, the equipment was improved, and concentric cylinders with protrusions were used to increase the contact time.
In 1954, Chambers developed a centrifugal absorber, which consists of a circular ring connected to a rotating plate.
1965, Vivian fixed a packed tower on the rotating arm of a large centrifuge to measure the influence of centrifugal acceleration on mass transfer coefficient. The experimental surface shows that the mass transfer coefficient of liquid film is proportional to the 0.4 1 ~ 0.48 power of acceleration. Vivian first studied mass transfer in rotating bed, but he did not put forward the concept of rotating bed supergravity.
1969, Todd carried out the experiment of centrifugal contactor. The centrifugal contactor consists of 12 layers of annular concentric sieve plates separated by 1 inch, which is similar to sieve plate tower in fluid flow.
The concept of supergravity first appeared in the late 1970s, and attracted the attention of the industry. This is a patented technology proposed by a new scientific team led by Professor ColinRamshaw of Imperial Chemical Company.
Its birth was originally caused by the idea of correcting separation to apply for NASA's space experiment project under microgravity conditions. 1976, the national aeronautics and space administration of the United States collected the microgravity field experiment project, and Professor ColinRamshaw of ICI Company (Imperial Chemical Company) of the United Kingdom made a study on the influence effect of microgravity field in the operation of chemical separation units such as distillation and absorption, and found that the mass transfer between liquid and gas was impossible and gas and liquid could not be effectively separated under zero gravity. However, the super gravity makes the surface tension of liquid relatively insignificant, and the liquid is pulled up or torn into tiny liquid films, filaments and droplets under the action of huge shear force, resulting in huge indirect coarse area, thus greatly improving the transfer rate coefficient and flooding rate of gas-liquid countercurrent operation, greatly increasing the production capacity of equipment, which is powerful for the separation process. This research result contributed to the birth of high gravity separation technology.
198 1 year, Professor Ramshaw of ICI Company applied for the world's first patent of packed high-gravity bed, and in the following years (198L ~ 1983), a number of patents named HIGEE (high gravity) new technology were put forward continuously.
The emergence of high gravity technology can be said to be a qualitative leap in strengthening mass transfer process. Since 1980s, people began to realize that this technology has a broad application prospect in the chemical industry. At present, many large chemical companies in the world are competing to develop and study the super-gravity technology, and have carried out certain pilot or industrial operation. At present, there are many pressurization, atmospheric pressure and negative pressure devices in operation, including absorption, desorption, extraction, rectification and other operations and experiments. Some progress has been made in engineering.
Newcastle University, case western reserve university, University of Texas and Washington University are at the advanced level in the world in the research and development of high-gravity devices.
In 1983, ICI company reported that the industrial-scale HIGEE plant was parallel to the traditional plate column to separate ethanol and isopropanol from benzene and cyclohexane, and it successfully operated for thousands of hours, which affirmed the engineering and technical feasibility of this new technology.
1984, Glitsch Company, which specializes in manufacturing towers and tower packing in the United States and occupies an important market in the world, purchased HIGEE patent from ICI Company, set up a special HIGEE R&D center, conducted a lot of research, and established cooperative research with CaseWesternReserve University, University of Washington (Missouri), TaxasAustin State University, Fluor Company specializing in gas treatment and Gas Research Institute (GRI). With the strong support of the Ministry of Energy, tens of millions of yuan have been invested in small-scale, pilot-scale and industrial demonstration devices, and great progress has been made.
1985, the U.S. Coast Guard established the first set of high-gravity devices to remove volatile components from underground sewage, and separated benzene and toluene from polluted groundwater, and the contents decreased from 200ppb and 500ppb to about 1ppb. The device has been running successfully for 6 years.
In 1987, FlourDaniel Company of the United States established a set of high-gravity device for selectively absorbing H2S from natural gas containing H2S and CO2 by using diethanolamine in ELPaso Natural Gas Company of New Mexico.
1In July, 1987, Glitch Company conducted two experiments in Louisiana, one was to absorb CO2 with diethanolamine and the other was to dry natural gas with triethylene glycol, both of which were successful.
In 1989, Glitch Company declared that buying a HIGEE equipment can replace a 50-foot tower, which is equivalent to 30 trays, and it is the most economical and effective way to transform traditional towers and improve product quality.
From 65438 to 0984, Professor N.C.Gardner of CaseWesternReserve University, with the support of Norton Company and Dow Company, studied flue gas desulfurization and depolymerization.
Martin and Martelli connected a traditional distillation column with a rotating packed bed (RPB), and tested the separation system of cyclohexane and n-heptane with a mesh metal packing.
Under the guidance of Professor Gardener of Case Western Reserve University, Hao studied the method of removing residual monomers from polystyrene by rotating packed bed.
The team led by Professor ColinRamshaw of Newcastle University, UK, has been devoted to the research of seawater deoxygenation for many years.
Dow Chemical Company developed the process of preparing hypochlorous acid by rotating packed bed in 1999.
In addition, the research on the application of high gravity technology abroad is mainly in the following aspects: (1) distillation and rectification; (2) Dust removal and fog removal in environmental protection, removal of SO2 and harmful gases in flue gas, liquid-liquid separation and liquid-solid separation; (3) absorption: drying, decarbonization and desulfurization of natural gas, and absorption of CO2; (4) Desorption, that is, blowing out aromatic hydrocarbons and chemical heat (absorption and desorption) from polluted groundwater; (5) Rotating electrochemical reactor and fuel cell (quickly removing bubbles and reducing overvoltage); (6) rotating the polymerization reactor; (7) Rotating disc heat exchanger and evaporator; (8) removing volatiles from the polymer; (9) Strengthening biological oxidation reaction process (traditional biochemical reaction is carried out in fermentation tank)
The research on the application of high gravity technology in China started late, but it has also achieved remarkable results, which are mainly used for deoxidation by water injection in oil fields, preparation of nano-materials, enhanced dust removal process, enhanced biochemical reaction process and rectification. Before 1985, the research of high gravity engineering technology was basically blank.
1983, Academician Wang Jiading introduced the new technology developed by ICI at the domestic chemical engineering conference.
1984, beijing university of chemical technology and case western reserve university confirmed their cooperation intention on the research and development of high gravity engineering technology.
65438-0988 Professor Zheng Chong from beijing university of chemical technology started the application of rotating packed bed in cooperation with CaseWesternReserve University in the United States. It has been highly valued and strongly supported by the Ministry of Chemical Industry and the State Science and Technology Commission. After demonstration, it has been listed as a national key scientific and technological project in the Eighth Five-Year Plan, and has also won the support of the National Natural Science Foundation for this high-tech basic research.
1990, China's first high-gravity engineering technology research center was built in beijing university of chemical technology, and a series of innovative research work was carried out. Over the years, it has obtained many national patents in the basic and applied research of high gravity technology. At the same time, other domestic universities, such as Zhejiang University of Technology, South China University of Technology, Tianjin University, etc. , also developed this technology, and achieved remarkable results.
200 1 Professor Ji Jianbing of Zhejiang University of Technology and others applied for the patent of rotating bed device named baffle high gravity field, and was authorized in June 2004. The application of high gravity engineering technology in distillation has pushed to a new height; Then Zhejiang University of Technology gradually applied for several invention patents and utility model patents.
As a result, a number of companies producing high-gravity rectifiers have appeared in the domestic market.