A MODEL FOR PREDICTING THE NUMBER OF MASS-TRANSFER UNITS AND THE EFFICIENCY OF SIEVE TRAYS IN RECTIFICATION

The design of rectification columns is based on the method of thetheoretical tray and the actual setupof real trays is carried out with the help of various kinetic characteristics, such as tray efficiency. The relation between local and integral efficiency is a complex function of geometric, physicochemical and hydrodynamic factors. A theoretical method for calculating the tray efficiency has not yet been proposed, because of the complex hydrodynamic setting and the influence of a number of factors. Empirical correlations for calculating the local or integral efficiency of the traycan be found in the literature. The aim of the present work is to make a comparison between the calculated local efficiency data by means of a model known from the literature and the experimentally obtained data from the rectification of a model Tetrachloromethane-Toluene binary mixture in a laboratory single-sieve tray column. Among the tasks of the currentwork is also to determine the parameters of the applied model. The proposed method is semi-empirical and allows for the calculation of the number of mass-transfer units and, therefore,of the local efficiency.