TITLE: Unit Operations for Gas-Liquid Mass Transfer in Reduced Gravity Environments.

AUTHOR: D. R. Pettit;   D. T. Allen.

INST.  AUTHOR: Los Alamos National Lab., NM.

SPONSOR: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC.

LANGUAGE: English

PUB.  TYPE: Technical Report

PUB.  COUNTRY: United States

SOURCE: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Sep 92,  5p.

NTIS ORDER NO.: N93-14011/9INW

NOTES: In NASA. Johnson Space Center, the Second Conference on Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21ST Century, Volume 2 p 647-651. Sponsored in Part by Doe.

ABSTRACT:

Basic scaling rules are derived for converting Earth-based designs of mass transfer equipment into designs for a reduced gravity environment.  Three types of gas-liquid mass transfer operations are considered: bubble columns, spray towers, and packed columns. Application of the scaling rules reveals that the height of a bubble column in lunar- and Mars-based operations would be lower than terrestrial designs by factors of 0.64 and 0.79 respectively. The reduced gravity columns would have greater cross-sectional areas, however, by factors of 2.4 and 1.6 for lunar and Martian settings. Similar results were obtained for spray towers. In contract, packed column height was found to be nearly independent of gravity.