Column packing, discrepancies experiment

Arwickar (1981) reported some results for distillation under total reflux conditions of the system acetone-methyl acetate-methanol. The experiments were carried out in a laboratory scale column of 7.62 cm diameter packed with 0.635 cm Raschig rings. The simulation of total reflux operations using the nonequilibrium model is discussed by Krishnamurthy and Taylor (1985a). In simulations of Arwickar s experiments Taylor et al. used the correlations of Onda et al. (1968) to estimate the mass transfer coefficients in each phase and the effective interfacial area. The average absolute discrepancy between predicted and measured mole fractions was less than 2 mol% for acetone and methyl acetate and less than 4 mol% for methanol. 

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