Ceramic Berl Ring

A ceramic Berl saddle, often listed as a Berl ring though it is not really a ring, is a piece of packing shaped like a small saddle: a curved, ceramic form, open and concave, that is dumped at random into a tower. It was the first saddle-shaped packing ever made, created to get around the weaknesses of the plain ring. The shape is everything. A ring is a straight tube, and tubes can settle one inside another and pack tight, leaving dead spots; a saddle cannot nest like that. Thrown into a bed, saddles land every which way and lock into an open, random heap with plenty of gaps. Liquid runs over their curved faces and spreads out, gas threads through the gaps, and the whole bed works more evenly than a bed of rings. So the Berl saddle is, simply, a curved ceramic saddle whose shape keeps the packed bed open.

The Berl saddle was designed to beat the Raschig ring, and it does so on several counts. Because saddles do not nest and blind off, the bed stays open and evenly packed, where a bed of rings can develop tight, dead pockets that channel the flow. The curved saddle spreads liquid over a larger wetted area than the inside and outside of a plain tube, so it offers more effective surface for the same volume. And the open, non-nesting pile has more free space, which means the gas meets less resistance and the pressure drop is lower. The result is better liquid distribution, higher mass-transfer efficiency and a lower pressure drop than a Raschig ring of the same size. The ring's only edge is that it is cheaper and simpler to make. For performance, the saddle wins.

They are close cousins. The Berl saddle came first; the Intalox saddle is its refinement. Both are curved saddles that resist nesting, but the Intalox shape was reworked so that the saddles interlock even less and are easier to press without breaking, which gives it a slightly more open bed and a little more capacity. In practice the Intalox saddle has largely succeeded the Berl saddle in new towers for those reasons. The Berl saddle is still a recognised, capable packing, though, and is specified where it is the established choice or a like-for-like replacement is wanted. If you are choosing fresh and want the last word in saddle performance, ask about the Intalox saddle; if you need Berl saddles specifically, that is what this is. Tell us which and we will supply it.

The Berl saddle here is fired ceramic, chosen for the same reason ceramic is chosen for any tower packing: it stands up to heat and to almost every acid and alkali, the usual exception being hydrofluoric acid, so it keeps working in hot, corrosive columns that would defeat plastic or metal. Chemical ceramics of this kind typically take temperatures around 1000 degrees. Its uses follow the general run of random packing: absorption, distillation, cooling, drying and scrubbing towers, across chemical processing, metallurgy and gas treatment. In each, the draw is the saddle's open bed and good distribution together with ceramic's toughness against heat and chemistry. Do note that this listing came without a datasheet, so we would confirm the exact sizes and ratings for your tower. Send us the duty and we will do that.