(605e) A Novel Potential Application of SiC Ceramic Foam Material to Distillation: Foam Monolithic Tray

Applications using foams material as distillation packing or tray have demonstrated higher performance than classical column internal except for the operation range. To overcome this disadvantage, a series of novel foam column internal have been developed, such as Foam Monolithic Tray, Structured Corrugation Foam Packing and so on. In this paper, the hydrodynamics performance and mass transfer efficiency of SiC foam monolithic tray is to be examined, with special emphasis focused on the effect of foam cell size and tray thickness. The hydraulic performance parameters and the mass transfer efficiency of the foam monolithic tray were measured in 600 mm i.d. and 300 mm i.d. diameter, respectively. The experimental values are compared with last trends and traditional column trays. In general, the comparison results showed that the hydrodynamics and mass transfer performances of Foam monolithic tray is acceptable as the mass transfer elements in the distillation column. The results also showed that the Foam monolithic tray has higher operation flexibility and significantly reduce the capital cost at industrial scale.