A Fundamental Model of Tray Performance

As noted in Section 12.1.1, there are two quite different regimes of operation of distillation trays, the froth regime and the spray regime. In this section we develop detailed models of the hydrodynamic and mass transfer character of these regimes. 

The froth regime on a distillation tray really consists of three zones. 

In Zone I, the jetting-bubbling formation zone, the vapor issues through the perforations in the tray in the form of jets, breaking into bubbles. These jets could be modeled as a set of parallel cylindrical vapor jets. The model parameters are 

In the free bubbling zone a distribution of bubble sizes is usually obtained. The model parameters for the bubbling zone are 

The fraction of vapor in each bubble population are given by 

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