Sieve plate design pressure drop

The plate thickness of bubble-cap and sieve plates is generally estabhshed by mechanical design factors and has little effect on pressure drop. For a sieve plate, however, the plate is an integral component of the vapor-dispersion system, and its thickness is important. 

FIG. 14-32 Aeration factor for pressure drop calculation, sieve plates. [Bolles and Fair, Encyclopedia of Chemical Processing and Design, vols. 16, 86. J. M. McKetta (ed.), Marcel Dekker, New Yoik, J9S2.]... 

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. 

Pressure drop. The pressure drop over the plates can be an important design consideration, particularly for vacuum columns. The plate pressure drop will depend on the detailed design of the plate but, in general, sieve plates give the lowest pressure drop, followed by valves, with bubble-caps giving the highest. 

The plates may be any of several types, including sieve, bubble-cap, and valve trays. Valve trays constitute multiple self-adjusting orifices that provide nearly constant gas pressure drop over considerable ranges of variation in gas flow. The gas pressure drop that can be taken across a single plate is necessarily limited, so that units designed for high contacting power must use multiple plates. 

For sieve trays, the number of kinetic heads equivalent to the total pressure drop through the plate itself is a function of the ratio of the sieve-hole diameter to the tray thickness and the ratio of the hole area per tray to the active area per tray as shown in Fig. 16-5. This pressure drop for a reasonable sieve-tray design is generally in the range of 1 to 3 kinetic heads, and Fig. 16-12 can be used to choose the most reasonable number to use in preliminary designs Designating the number of kinetic heads obtained from Fig. 16-12 as K.H., the pressure drop due to gas flow through the holes for a sieve tray expressed as liquid head is... 

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