Scrubber in a horizontal design

[SimonWilhelm]

Hello

My company are currently opperating an ammonia scrubber. Our existing system is designed as a spraytower, as the air we clean are filled with dust that would clogg up a packed column.

We are now investigating whether or not a horizontal flow design would be possible. The problem is that litterature on such designs are scarce.

My question is whether or not anybody here have experience in such designs, and know which pitfalls to avoid or better yet, if anybody could point me towards some litterature?

I hope somebody can help

Kind regards
Simon

 

[siretb]

Horizontal flow is possible but I see no major reason why it should be any better.
If you plug a packed tower you may either increase the wetting rate (means more pressure drop);
or change to a larger nominal size packing ; in both options you keep a packed, upflow tower.
I would consider an empty tower with spray nozzles. NH3 is fairly easy to scrub so such design should not be too troublesome.
The main advantage of an empty tower is that it will be almost immune to plugging.

 

[rmw]

I found this among other stuff by googling.

rmw

http://www.heilprocessequipment.com/scrubbers.htm

 

[delf]

For wet scrubbing is the most prevalent form of control for inorganic emissions.
It is carried out in either spray towers or packed bed towers.
The inoic nature of acids, based and salts makes these compounds good
candidates for removal from air or stack gases by wet scrubbing,
because the ionic separation that occurs in water creates
advantageous equilibrium condtions.
Wet scrubbing may be used to controlcovalent species, such as
chorine, oxygen difuoride and phosphorus trichloride.
The solubiilty of the gas in water is significantly influeneced this
tech.
Basically, the pollutants in the form of gases or mists are
transfered from the gas stream to the scrubbing liquid as long as the
has not achieved equilibrium in the liquid stream.

This is a temperature dependant process, and lower temperature favor absorption
of gases by the scrubbing liquid. So we often placed upstream of absorption towers
to cool the hot stack gases.


I wonder this horizontal scrubber is crosscurrent or cocurrent design.
Crosscurrent is faovor when gases are highly soluble since they offer less time
for absorption.