Effect of Fluid Dynamics on Separation Efficiency of Sieve Tray

Sieve trays are popular among vapour-liquid contacting devices in distillation columns due to their versatility and simple construction. Flow and mixing patterns on the trays have strong influence on their mass-transfer efficiency. Plug flow is considered ‘ideal’ whereas flow non-idealities such as liquid channelling, bypassing, re-circulation and stagnant zones are disadvantageous for the tray efficiency. Flow patterns quantified by Schubert et. al. (2016) using wire-mesh sensor are analysed using existing mathematical models for efficiency predictions. A serious loss in efficiency is predicted for the tray with large stagnant zones.

(1) M. Schubert, M. Piechotta, M. Beyer, E. Schleicher, U. Hampel and J. Paschold, ‘An imaging technique for characterization of fluid flow pattern on industrial-scale column sieve trays’, Chemical Engineering Research and Design, vol. 111, pp.138–146, 2016.