(15a) How to Properly Evaluate and Document Tower Performance

Obtaining good tower performance information is a difficult and tedious task that needs special attention to many details. The end result of such an endeavor can lead to a wealth of knowledge that can be invaluable for the operation of that particular tower and numerous others. How to generate a good performance evaluation with proper sensitivity analysis and documentation will be the topic of this paper. Special attention will be given towards model choice, Heat and Material balancing, data acquisition, data evaluation, hydraulics evaluation, performance diagram generation, sensitivity analysis and final documentation.

The author has had the opportunity to evaluate numerous towers to examine both good and bad operation. Many of these evaluations have been the topics of his past AIChE papers. The wealth of his experience will be placed in this one document to help establish a standard for future tower evaluations.