Effect of Holdup on Reactive Trays

We now investigate the impact of changes in various parameters from those used in the base case. The first parameter studied is the holdup of liquid on the reactive trays. As we would expect, the larger the holdup, the easier it is to achieve the desired conversion. 

The vapor boilup reflects the energy cost for operating the column, so larger tray holdups reduce energy consumption. 

Note that the impurities in the product change with tray holdup. The larger vapor and liquid rates needed with the small holdups give more separation, so there is less of heavier reactant B in the distillate and less of hghter reactant A in the bottoms. The fractionation decreases as liquid and vapor rates decrease, so the products contain more of the reactant component that is not adjacent to the product. Remember that the purities of both products remain at 95 mol%. 

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Effect of Holdup on Reactive Trays. In all of the ideal cases considered in previous chapters, increasing the holdup on reactive trays improves performance. This corresponds to our intuition. However, in the TAME reactive column the effect of Mjtx is unexpectedly different as Table 8.6 shows. Increasing the reactive tray holdup increases the energy... 

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