Influence of tray geometry on scaling up distillation efficiency from laboratory data

This paper studies the effect of tray geometry (especially hole diameter) a nd liquid tray composition on tray efficiency in a bench-scale distillation column. The results of this study are used for scaling up tray efficiency. Two binary systems, ethanol/water and cyclohexane/n-heptane, were consider ed. The operating conditions were atmospheric pressure and total reflux. Fo r each one, two different hole diameters (small and large) were also tested . Kirschbaum's industrial data (1962) for the ethanol/water system and of Y anagi and Sakata's (1982) for the cyclohexane/n-heptane system were conside red as reference values. The results show the importance of reproducing the hole diameter and liquid tray composition in small trays for using laborat ory data to predict large tray efficiency.