Effect of Surfactant on Hydrodynamic and Mass Transfer Charactersitics in Rotating Disc Contactor

Abstract

   It is well known that the addition of a small amount of surfactants to any liquid-liquid extraction system can results in reduction of overall mass transfer coefficient, which has received considerable attention in a number of extraction systems. Four types of surfactants (S.A.A), were used in this study, which added to the aqueous continuous phase.

   The present work represents an experimental study of the effects of four types of S.A.A on overall mass transfer coefficient of (kerosene- acetone –water) system with different S.A.A concentrations and fixed acetone concentration (10%wt/wt solute acetone in dispersed phased kerosene).

   The results showed that with 0.1 PPT concentration of surfactants employed the reduction was about 23%, 16.5%,12.5% and 21% with the four types of surfactant.

   These reductions where increases with increasing surfactant concentration. New mathematical correlation has been developed to predict the volumetric overall mass transfer coefficient for system contaminating with surfactants in RDC column as a function of Froude number, Reynolds number ,Weber number Schmidt number and physical properties of the system.