Distillation towers plate efficiency

The present distillation tower contains 50 actual plates. Your calculations have indicated that a reflux ratio of 1 1 will allow 98 percent of the acetone to be removed, assuming a 40 percent plate efficiency. The product material may be assumed as 100 percent acetone. These conditions are satisfactory, and you have made calculations at these conditions, giving the results shown in Table 7. 

Gas absorption can be carried out in a column equipped with sieve trays or other types of plates normally used for distillation. A column with trays is sometimes chosen instead of a packed column to avoid the problem of liquid distribution in a large diameter tower and to decrease the uncertainty in scaleup. The number of theoretical stages is determined by stepping off plates on a y-x diagram, and the number of actual stages is then calculated using an average plate efficiency. The plate and local efficiencies are defined in the same way as for distillation [Eqs. 

Equilibrium-stage methods are usually adequate for nearly ideal distillation systems when coupled with calculations of plate efficiency to estimate actual trays or, in the case of packed towers, when HETS (height equivalent of a theoretical stage) or HETP (height equivalent to a theoretical plate) values are known from experience or from experiment to enable the estimation of packed height. For absorbers, strippers, and nonideal distillation systems, mass-transfer models are preferred, but their use requires a value for the tower diameter and a tray layout or type and size of packing. Even when mass-transfer models are preferred, initial calculations are usually made with equilibrium-stage models. Also, note that data for reliable mass-transfer coefficients is often difficult to obtain. 

Various types of tray (plate) towers for absorption and distillation. In order to efficiently contact the vapor and liquid in absorption and distillation, tray (plate) towers are often used. A very common type of tray contacting device is the sieve tray, which is shown schematically in Fig. 10.6-la and in Section 11.4A for distillation. 

Use of HETP Data for Absorber Design Distillation design methods (see Sec. 13) normally involve determination of the number of theoretical equihbrium stages or plates N. Thus, when packed towers are employed in distillation appRcations, it is common practice to rate the efficiency of tower packings in terms of the height of packing equivalent to one theoretical plate (HETP). 

A common type of distillation contacting device used in refinery applications is the sieve tray. In the early 50 s and for many years before, the bubble cap tray was the mainstay of the distillation field. A sieve tray consists of a flat plate with regularly spaced holes, normally 1/2 to 1 inch in diameter. Liquid flows horizontally across the tray and into a channel, called a downcomer, which leads to the tray below. The sieve tray exhibits good capacity, excellent efficiency, low pressure drop, and good flexibility i.e., it will operate quite efficiently at tower loadings which are 1/2 to 1/3 of design values. 

The hot feed enters the fractionator, which normally contains 30-50 fractionation trays. Steam is introduced at the bottom of the fractionator to strip off light components. The efficiency of separation is a function of the number of theoretical plates of the fractionating tower and the reflux ratio. Reflux is provided by condensing part of the tower overhead vapors. Reflux ratio is the ratio of vapors condensing back to the still to vapors condensing out of the still (distillate). The higher the reflux ratio, the better the separation of the mixture. 

The efficient operation of the distillation, or fractionating, tower requires the rising vapors to mix with the liquid on each tray. This is usually achieved by installing a short chimney on each hole in the plate and a cap with a serrated... 

Methylchlorosilanes are difficult to separate due to the closeness of some of their boiling points. It is especially difficult to separate pure dimethyldichlorosilane (the boiling point is 70.2 °C) devoid of methyltrichlorosilane (the boiling point is 66.1 °C), because the difference of their boiling points is only 4.1 °C. It is known that the efficiency of separating reactive mixtures depends on the number of theoretical plates in the rectification towers moreover, in distillation there is a certain dependence between the number of theoretical plates and the difference in the boiling points of the components. For precise distillation and compete separation of methyltrichlorosilane from dimethyldichlorosilane, one needs a rectification tower with the efficiency of 60-80 theoretical plates. 

Distillation stage calculations are usually performed with ideal stages, The number of ideal stages required for the separation is divided by the overall column efficiency (Sec, 7,1,1) to obtain the required number of trays. In packed towers, the number of stages in the column is multiplied by the HETP (Height Equivalent of a Theoretical Plate, see Sec. 9.1,2) to obtain the packed height. 

One property is boiling point. As you learned in Chapter 5, distillation is a technique used to separate substances that have different boiling points. In the petroleum industry, huge towers are used to distill petroleum into its component liquids. Inside the tower, many plates provide multiple surfaces on which repeated vaporization-condensation cycles take place. Repeated cycles provide for more efficient separations and allow fractions containing only one or a few different compounds to be isolated. This method of separation is called fractional distillation. 

All heat requirements for the process are provided in the form of open steam at 400 psia. Some is used at the bottom of S-1 to strip HjS and the rest is fed to the twelfth plate in HT-1 to control the temperature of the hot towers and to compensate for heat losses and heat exchanger inefficiencies. Steam consumption is 1778/0.28 = 6400 mol/mol of DjO produced. This is much less than the 200,000 mol/mol DjO needed in water distillation. Additional energy in the amount of 680 kWh/kg D2O is used to circulate gas and pump liquid. This, however, is much less than is used in electrolysis or hydrogen distillation (Table 13.7). The low energy consumption of the GS process is due in large measure to the efficient heat recovery obtainable in the flow sheet Fig. 13.30, which follows Spevack s patent [S7]. 

In practice the packed tower has been losing out relative to the bubble tower. The development of corrosion-resistant alloys and of bubble-plate columns made of ceramic, glass, and plastic has made it possible to rectify corrosive mixtures in such units. The development of efficient laboratory bubble-plate columns as small as 1 in. in diameter has made it possible to carry out such distillation in the laboratory, and experience has indicated that these columns give data that are... 

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