Use of structured packing as a dualflow tray in distillation

摘要

A novel dualflow tray design has been studied.This new tray type makes use of a thin slice of structured packing and,as such,is named the structured packing tray (SP-tray).The SP-tray was found to have a 44% higher capacity compared with the dualflow sieve tray using high liquid density systems.However,the capacity and turndown of the SP-tray are much more dependent on the liquid density of the system than the dualflow sieve tray.It was found that the efficiency of the SP-tray remains fairly constant over a wide range of vapour loadings.In regions where vapour loadings were low enough that no froth exists on the surface of the tray,the SP-tray had efficiencies 100% greater than the dualflow sieve tray.The occurrence of the additional vapour-liquid contact time present within the SP-tray itself leads to a nearly infinite turndown ratio.