Liquid distribution makes the difference between good and bad equipment performance in petroleum refining, so its understanding is a major issue component in distillation columns. Some studies have been done in liquid distributors, but less attention has been paid to on chimney trays, which are considered by some authors the second most problematic distillation internals, second only to packed-tower distributor. The present work considers a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) study in a real chimney tray. This study represents a base case to analyze the phenomenon of liquid maldistribution in order to propose changes on the design concept. The liquid maldistribution influence will affect directly the operation condition. CFD analysis aids in comparing the real chimney performance with different potential arrangement at three levels of mass flow rate. A three-dimensional (3D) transient, non homogeneous and free surface model (Eulerian-Eulerian approach) designed for the flow and geometry improvement of chimney trays in a fractionator tower was applied to the phenomenon description. Results show the importance of employing the Eulerian-Eulerian model approach in virtue of the influence of the liquid phase in the gas phase flow pattern. KEYWORDS: Chimney tray, distillation column, multiphase flow, CFD.

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