Influence of Tray Geometry on Scaling Up Distillation Efficiency from Laboratory Data

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of tray geometry (especially hole diameter) and liquid tray composition on tray efficiency in a bench-scale distillation column. The results of this study are used for scaling up tray efficiency. Two binary systems, ethanol/water and cyclohexane/n-heptane, were considered. The operating conditions were atmospheric pressure and total reflux. For each one, two different hole diameters (small and large) were also tested. Kirschbaum's industrial data (1962) for the ethanol/water system and of Yanagi and Sakata's (1982) for the cyclohexane/n-heptane system were considered as reference values. The results show the importance of reproducing the hole diameter and liquid tray composition in small trays for using laboratory data to predict large tray efficiency.

Direct Tray and Point Efficiency Measurements Including Weeping Effects through a Convenient Add-On for Air–Water Simulators

“…Typical experimental setups used for conducting these experiments include small cross-flow trays as well as Oldershaw columns (e.g., Manivannan et al), in which the liquid on the tray is considered as perfectly mixed, and hence, E OG = E MV . However, this approach does not account for wall effects that are hardly negligible on the small scale and lacks agreed criteria that allow reproducing the large-scale froth condition on a small scale. , The proposed criteria include the fractional approach to flooding, the clear liquid height, and the tray geometry . Other examples of small-scale studies and relevant criteria are covered by Finch and Van Winkle, Garrett et al, and Biddulph et al…”

“…However, this approach does not account for wall effects that are hardly negligible at small-scale and lacks agreed criteria that allow reproducing the large-scale froth condition on a small-scale [33][34] . Proposed criteria include the fractional approach to flooding 35 , the clear liquid height and the tray geometry 36 . Other examples of small-scale studies and relevant criteria are covered by Finch and Van Winkle 37 , Garrett et al 38 and Biddulph et al 39 .…”

“…33,34 The proposed criteria include the fractional approach to flooding, 35 the clear liquid height, and the tray geometry. 36 Other examples of small-scale studies and relevant criteria are covered by Finch and Van Winkle, 37 Garrett et al, 38 and Biddulph et al 39 In the second approach, the number of overall gas transfer units N OG is determined, which can be related to the point efficiency as…”

Prediction of the overall sieve tray efficiency for a group of hydrocarbons, an artificial neural network approach

“…The primary prerequisite in modeling the neural networks is the availability of a database. Therefore, the experimental data from the following references have been utilized in this work, respectively: Lopez and Kirschbaum (Lopez andCastells, 1999 andKirschbaum, 1962), Proctor (Proctor et al, 1998), Kastanek and Biddulph (Kastanek and Standart, 1967;Biddulph and Dribika, 1986), Rush and Jones (Rush and Stirba, 1957;Jones and Pyle, 1995), Kunesh (Kunesh et al, 1996), Rush (Rush and Stirba, 1957) and Lopez and Yanagi (Kunesh et al, 1996;Yanagi and Sakata, 1982). The physical properties, operating conditions and specifications of the tray geometry are exhibited in Table 1.…”

CFD study on flow characteristics of sieve tray columns with circular downcomers

“…Colwell [11] and Bennett et al [12] obtained the expressions of gas holdup related to the tray geometry and fluid velocity based on experiments, respectively. Solari and Bell [13] used fluorescence technology to measure the detailed residence time and velocity distribution of five sieve trays with a diameter of 1.22 m. L opez and Castells [14] experimentally analyzed the effect of tray geometry (especially hole diameter) and liquid tray composition on tray efficiency in a bench-scale distillation column. The research findings revealed that trays with smaller hole diameters exhibited higher efficiencies compared to those with larger hole diameters.…”