The rotating packed bed (RPB) with split packing is a novel gas-liquid contactor

which intensifies the mass transfer processes controlled by gas-side resistance. To assess its efficacy

the mass transfer characteristics with adjacent rings in counter-rotation and co-rotation modes in a split packing RPB were studied experimentally. The physical absorption system NH

3

-H

2

O was used for characterizing the gas volumetric mass transfer coefficient (k

y

a

e

) and the effective interfacial area (a

e

) was determined by chemical absorption in the CO

2

-NaOH system. The variation in k

y

a

e

and a

e

with the operating conditions is also investigated. The experimental results indicated that k

y

a

e

and a

e

for counter-rotation of the adjacent packing rings in the split packing RPB were higher than those for co-rotation

and both counter-rotation and co-rotation of the split packing RPB were superior over conventional RPBs under the similar operating conditions.