• mass-transfer coefficient
• Experimental
• alcohols systems
• oxygen

Volumetric mass-transfer coefficient for Mellapak M250Y, M350Y and M500Y has been measured by standard method of desorption of oxygen into nitrogen stream from methanol, ethanol and n-propanol.
Proportionality of these kLa values with liquid flow rate have been found with the power of 0.6-0.7, accordingly with those found for acqueous systems.
As expected, highest values of kLa has been found for the substance with lowest viscosity/ highest diffusivity values (methanol), even if they are very similar for all the substances under the same superficial velocities, for all the packings tested.
Experimental kLa datas have been compared with predicted values from mass-transfer models (e.g. Bravo-Rocha-Fair, Brunazzi etc.), with values measured for the same systems (alcohol-O2-N2) in the wetted wall column and with datas obtained under distillation conditions for mixtures of the same alcohols (MeOH-EtOH; MeOH-PrOH; EtOHPrOH).
Several attempts to correlate the experimental data to predict the liquid phase volumetric mass-transfer coefficient have been done, altough it has not been possible to develop any correlation with satisfactory accuracy.