(102a) Distillation Tray Design through a Better Understanding of Operating Windows

Operational capacity of trays is quite detailed and there are numerous hydraulics parameters that have been offered for decades to help the designer understand both turnup and turndown of such equipment. Understanding all of the terms available such as; Flood, Spray, System Limit, Backup, Max velocity, Min velocity, Weir loading, entrainment, weeping, dumping, stability, balancing, plug flow, downcomer seal, etc. can be a daunting task for even an experience distillation person. All of these hydraulic parameters can be plotted on an Operating Window (or sometimes referred to as a performance diagram) and once plotted, the designer can/should have a better understanding of each hydraulic parameterâ??s behavior. The author has written a previous paper on this topic, this paper will take the performance diagram one step further and show some of the practical aspects of its usefulness in industry.