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Effect of number of fractionating trays on reactive distillation performance
Author(s) -
AlArfaj Muhammad A.,
Luyben William L.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
aiche journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 167
eISSN - 1547-5905
pISSN - 0001-1541
DOI - 10.1002/aic.690461210
Subject(s) - reactive distillation , tray , distillation , chemistry , stripping (fiber) , process engineering , work (physics) , fractional distillation , pilot plant , continuous distillation , batch distillation , chromatography , mechanical engineering , engineering , organic chemistry
Sneesby et al. recently suggested that adding trays in the stripping and rectifying sections of a reactive distillation column can degrade performance. This effect, if true, is not only counterintuitive, but very disturbing because it suggests that the design of reactive distillation columns cannot use conservative estimates of tray numbers, that is, we cannot simply add excess trays, as in conventional distillation. The problem is compounded by the uncertainty in vapor–liquid equilibrium data and tray efficiencies. This implies that developing reactive distillation columns would require extensive experimental work at the pilot‐plant and plant stages to find the numbers of stages offering the best performance. Such a scenario would mean long and expensive development programs. This article explores the effect of the number of trays in the rectifying and/or stripping sections of reactive (catalytic) distillation columns. Three reactive distillation systems are used: an ideal hypothetical system, the ETBE system, and the methyl acetate system. Contrary to the published results, it is demonstrated that additional trays do not degrade performance. Two degrees of freedom available in all cases must be carefully chosen for fair comparisons.