Packed towers McCabe-Thiele method

Both absorption and stripping can be operated as equilibrium stage operations with contact of liquid and vapor. Since distillation is also an equilibrium stage operation with contact of liquid and vapor, we would expect the equipment to be quite similar. This is indeed the case both absorption and stripping are operated in packed and plate towers. Plate towers can be designed by following an adaptation of the McCabe-Thiele method. Packed towers can be designed by use of HETP or preferably by mass transfer considerations (see Chapter 16T... 

Combine material-balances information from the McCabe-Thiele graphical method with interphase mass-transfer considerations to determine the packed height of the rectifying and stripping sections of a continuous-contact binary distillation tower. 

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