Tuesday, November 6, 2007 - 4:20 PM
272c

Dry Tray Pressure Drop Of Sieve Trays

Daniel R. Summers, Sulzer, 4019 South Jackson Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74107

The sieve tray has been in the market place as a distillation device for many decades. It has been used extensively on distillation tray equipment worldwide as a highly efficient vapor/liquid-contacting device. Many people have examined dry tray pressure drop data for sieve tray decks and there have been several attempts to correlate this data. This paper will be a supplement to the author's AIChE March 2001 paper on the dry tray pressure drop of movable and fixed valves. A correlation for sieve tray pressure drop will be presented that incorporates tray thickness, hole diameter and open area. This correlation will be compared to data. It is felt that a definitive dry tray pressure drop correlation would be of great interest to those working in Column Design.