UFM Valve: An Advanced Mini-Valve to Boost the Performances of the Fractionation Trays

Maximizing capacity of major equipment, such as distillation columns, is a key factor to meet the most challenging targets of every industrial plants i.e. Oil Refineries, Petrochemical Plants, LNG Plants, and Gas Fields. 

In the last 20 years, a lot of effort and research work have been done to enhance the capacity and the efficiency of the mass transfer components, with the scope of pushing the distillation columns up to their hydraulic limit set by the vessel diameter.

Sulzer Chemtech has recently developed a new type of valve: UFM (Umbrella Floating Valve), which substantially improves the performances of the fractionation trays.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the characteristics of this new feature, its fields of application, and the achievable benefits in terms of column throughput, fractionation stages, and pressure drop.