The main objective of this work is to establish appropriated ways for estimating the overall efficiencies of industrial distillation columns with valve trays with downcomer and dualflow trays. The knowledge of efficiencies has fundamental importance in the design and performance evaluation of distillation columns. Searching in the literature, a tree of alternatives was identified to compose the tray efficiency model, depending on the mass transfer models, the liquid distribution and vapor flow models on the tray, the liquid entrainment model, the multicomponent mixture equilibrium model, the physical properties models, the height of froth on the tray model and the efficiency definition. In this work, different methods to predict the overall efficiency of distillation columns with valve and dualflow trays were composed and compared with data from three commercial distillation columns under different operating conditions. The models were inserted in the Aspen Plus 12.1 simulator, in Fortran language, together with tray geometrical data, fluid properties and operating data of the distillation columns. For each column, the best thermodynamic package was chosen by checking the temperature profile and overhead and bottom compositions obtained via simulation against the corresponding actual data of industrial columns. A modification in the fraction of holes evaluation that is jetting parameter of the Garcia's hydraulic model of dispersion above the tray was proposed. This modification produced better results than the original model to predict the fraction of holes that are jetting and in the efficiency of dualflow trays and similar results to Garcia model in the efficiency evaluation of valve trays.

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This work is part of a joint project to built a computational tool for power plant simulation, dealing specifically with the reaction chamber (place of the boiler where the fuel is burned). In order to describe the conversion of chemical energy to thermal energy, an onedimensional pseudo-homogeneous mathematical model, with variable physical properties, and based on mass and energy balances, was developed. The equations were implemented in the gPROMS simulator and the model parameters were estimated using the module gEST of this software, with experimental data from a large-scale coal-fired utility boiler and kinetic data from the open literature. The results showed that the model predicts the composition of the outlet combustion gas satisfactorily.

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