Effects of Flow Direction on a Sieve Tray of Divided Wall Column

Energy utilization in view of high energy cost have been concern of distillation designers. Process heat integration has caused widespread use of DWC in industry. The design and hydrodynamic study of DWC tray is essential, nonetheless there is only few cfd study about such trays in the open literatures. Therefore, experiments on design of sieve trays carried out with air-water system. Furthermore the obtained data of froth region was used for hydrodynamic study by CFD. Capacity graph, dry pressure drop and wet pressure drop of trays at different gas velocity and liquid flow rates were investigated. Effect of input liquid flow direction on sieve tray of DWC under condition, the same gas velocity and the same liquid loads per weir, QL/W , has been analyzed and their vectors are reported. Back mixing and high turbulancy that affect lowering tray efficiency are obvious. The reported results are an operational idea for a deeper understanding of DWC tray designs