Cross-Flow versus Counterflow Air-Stripping Towers

Abstract

Mass-transfer and pressure-drop packing performance correlations are used together with tower design equations and detailed cost models to compare the effectiveness of cross-flow and counterflow air stripping towers over a wide range of contaminant volatility. Cross-flow towers are shown to offer a significant economic advantage over counterflow towers when stripping low volatility contaminants primarily due to savings in energy costs. These savings increase as contaminant volatility decreases and as water flow rate increases. A further advantage of the cross-flow configuration is that it extends the feasible operating range for air stripping as cross-flow towers can accommodate higher air-to-water flow ratios than conventional counterflow towers. Finally it is shown that the optimized least-cost design for both counterflow and cross-flow towers varies with Henry's law constant, water flow rate, and percent removal, but that the optimum is virtually insensitive to other cost and operating variables. This greatly simplifies the tower design procedure.