Fiber beds

Fiber Bed Alist Filtration. In-depth fiber bed filters are used for the collection of Hquid droplets, fogs, and mists. Horizontal pads of knitted metal wire (or plastic fibers), 100—150 mm thick, and gas updow are used for Hquid entrainment removal. Pressure drop is 250—500 Pa (1.9—3.8 mm Hg). 

Venturi scmbbers can be operated at 2.5 kPa (19 mm Hg) to coUect many particles coarser than 1 p.m efficiently. Smaller particles often require a pressure drop of 7.5—10 kPa (56—75 mm Hg). When most of the particulates are smaller than 0.5 p.m and are hydrophobic, venturis have been operated at pressure drops from 25 to 32.5 kPa (187—244 mm Hg). Water injection rate is typicaUy 0.67—1.4 m of Hquid per 1000 m of gas, although rates as high as 2.7 are used. Increasing water rates improves coUection efficiency. Many venturis contain louvers to vary throat cross section and pressure drop with changes in system gas flow. Venturi scmbbers can be made in various shapes with reasonably similar characteristics. Any device that causes contact of Hquid and gas at high velocity and pressure drop across an accelerating orifice wiU act much like a venturi scmbber. A flooded-disk scmbber in which the annular orifice created by the disc is equivalent to a venturi throat has been described (296). An irrigated packed fiber bed with performance similar to a... 

Coalescing demister pads have been used in some single absorption plants instead of packed fiber beds to remove mist from the stack gas. For submicrometer particle collection, these devices are not as efficient as packed fiber beds. Nevertheless, they have been used in some plants to obtain nearly... 

Packed fiber bed mist eliminators can be designed to operate at almost any desired particle collection efficiencies, depending on the allowable pressure drop and cost. A good discussion of sulfuric acid mist generation, control, and mist eliminator design is available (109,110). 

Solid particulates are captured as readily as hquids in fiber beds but can rapidly plug the bed if they are insoluble. Fiber beds have frequently been used for mixtures of liqmds and soluble sohds and with soluble solids in condensing situations. Sufficient solvent (usually water) is atomized into the gas stream entering the collector to irrigate the fiber elements and dissolve the collected particulate. Such nber beds have been used to collect fine fumes such as ammonium nitrate and ammonium chloride smokes, and oil mists from compressed air. 

Fiber-Bed Scrubbers Fibrous-bed structures are sometimes used as gas-liquid contactors, with cocnrrent flow of the gas and hqnid streams. In such contactors, both scrubbing (particle deposition on droplets) and filtration (particle deposition on fibers) may take place. If only mists are to be collected, small fibers may be used, but if solid particles are present, the use of fiber beds is limited by the tendency of the beds to phig. For dnst-cohectiou service, the fiber bed must be composed of coarse fibers and have a high void fraction, so as to minimize the tendency to plug. The fiber bed may be made from metal or... 

Lucas and Porter (U.S. Patent 3,370,401, 1967) developed a fiber-bed scrubber in which the gas and scrubbing liquid flow vertically upward through a fiber bed (Fig. 17-55). The beds tested were composed of knitted structures made from fibers with diameters ranging From 89 to 406 [Lm. Lucas and Porter reported that the fiber-bed scrubber gave substantially higher efficiencies than did venturi-type scrubbers tested with the same dust at the same gas pressure drop. In similar experiments, Semrau (Semrau and Lunn, op. cit.) also found that a fiber-bed contactor made with random-packed steel-wool fibers gave higher efficiencies than an orifice contactor. However, there... 

Despite their potential for increased collec tion efficiency, fiber-bed scrubbers have had only limited commercial acceptance for dust collec tion because of their tendency to become plugged. Their principal use has been in small units such as engine-intake-air cleaners, for which it is feasible to remove the fiber bed for cleaning at frequent intervals. 

Explosions emergency relief, 450 Explosions, vapor cloud, 520 Explosive limits, 485 External fires, see fires Factors of safety, llow, 56 Fiber bed/pads impingement separator, 254, 255... 

This type of technology is a part of the group of air pollution controls collectively referred to as wet scrubbers. Fiber-bed scrubbers are also known as wetted-filter scrubbers and mist eliminators. The technology is based on the removal of air pollutants by inertial and diffusional interception. 

Fiber-bed scrubbers are used to collect fine or soluble particulate matter or as mist eliminators to collect liquid aerosols, including inorganic (e.g., sulfuric acid mist) and volatile organic compounds. Insoluble or coarse PM will clog the fiber bed with time, and VOCs that are difficult to condense will not be collected efficiently. 

Fiber-bed scrubber collection efficiencies for PM and VOC mists generally range from 70 to greater than 99%, depending... 

The temperature of the inlet waste gas flow is generally restricted by the choice of materials. Plastic fiber beds are generally restricted to operate below 60°C (140°F). 

Waste gas streams are often cooled before entering fiber-bed scrubbers to condense as much of the liquid in the flow as possible and to increase the size of the existing aerosol particles through condensation. A prefilter is generally used to remove larger particles from the gas stream prior to its entering the scrubber. 

Packed columns, 10 769-772, 773 band broadening, 6 412 for distillzation, 5 768-776 gas chromatography, 6 377, 379 instrumentation, 6 423-424 Packed column supercritical fluid chromatography (pSFC), 19 567 Packed fiber-bed mist eliminators, 23 781 Packed towers, 25 810, 811 Packing(s)... 

Alliger (U.S. Patents 3,659,402,1972, and 3,905,788,1975) describes fiber-bed structures which are not random, but are rather built up from flat mesh sheets offset angularly from one layer to the next and then compressed and bonded. Such bonded beds of relatively coarse hydrophobic fibers both are remarkably flushable, to prevent fouling by insoluble solids, and have surprisingly high collection efficiency per unit pressure drop for submicrometer particles, approaching that of irrigated fine hydrophobic fiber filters such as described by Fair (U.S. Patent 3,135,592, 1964) and Vosseller (U.S. Patent 3,250,059, 1966). 

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