A new, ultracapacity tray for distillation columns

The gas flow capacity of conventional crossflow distillation trays is norma lly limited by the propensity of the gas to entrain liquid from the tray. O nly a slight amount of such entrainment can be permitted without serious de gradation of mass transfer efficiency. The tray-type contacting device desc ribed here is designed to entrain all of the liquid entering the tray, and then separate that liquid by a device located within the tray zone. As a re sult, considerably more gas flow can be accommodated in a distillation colu mn sized for conventional crossflow trays. Complete distillation test data, taken at a semi-works scale, are presented along with a mechanistic model which represents the data and which can be used for extension to other dist illation conditions.