Preferential wetting of tower material in spray columns for extraction
Preferential wetting of tower material in spray columns for extraction
(OP)
I was reading a section on Spray Columns used for Liquid-Liquid Extraction & it has a section that says:
"It is normal practice to select the phase that preferentially wets the internals of a tower as the continuous phase"
Given a carbon steel or stainless tower, how does one go about evaluating which phase would be the one preferentially wetting the tower internals? e.g. If you mix (say) Water & Toluene which phase preferentially wets the tower?
"It is normal practice to select the phase that preferentially wets the internals of a tower as the continuous phase"
Given a carbon steel or stainless tower, how does one go about evaluating which phase would be the one preferentially wetting the tower internals? e.g. If you mix (say) Water & Toluene which phase preferentially wets the tower?





RE: Preferential wetting of tower material in spray columns for extraction
If you need to measure wetting of a surface, it's done by contact angle measurement. If a droplet of your test liquid sits on the surface as a perfect sphere that is 180 degrees, with the other extreme of just spreading out flat on the surface giving 0 degrees.
Matt