A NEWLY DEVELOPED LIQUID-LIQUID EXTRACTION COLUMN——The Open Turbine Rotating Disc Contactor(OTRDC)

The experimental study on hydrodynamics,axial mixing and mass transfer has been carried out in anewly developed liquid-liquid contactor,the open turbine rotating disc contactor(OTRDC).It has been foundthat the OTRDC is possible to be operated with higher hold-up of dispersed phase,larger interface and hencehigher efficiency of mass transfer comparing with the ordinary RDC.In correlating axial mixing data,a combinedmodel has been used in which both forward mixing due to the drop size distribution and backmixingof droplets are taken into account.The RTD curves of dispersed phase predicted by the model were fit wellwith the experimental data.The comparison of the experimental mass transfer data with thosc predicted by theaxial mixing model and theoretical single drop models shown they are in good agreement.