Distillation Archives - Chemical Engineering

From Lab to Digital Twin: Estimating Simulation Parameters for Batch Columns from Experimental Data

Chemical Engineering — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 21:52:53 +0000

The Batch Column in CHEMCAD is a powerful unit operation that allows the fast, simple, and reliable estimation of the feasibility of a batch distillation process. Whether you’re designing a new column, developing new separation processes in existing columns, optimizing current plants, or troubleshooting issues, this unit operation can perform all these functions and more. […]

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Troubleshooting a Trayed Distillation Column

Chemical Engineering — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Presented here is the progress and resolution of a troubleshooting case involving a distillation column with a capacity reduction problem. An inner inspection of the column during normal operation was not feasible to investigate the cause of the capacity reduction, because it would require a total plant shutdown for more than a week. This article discusses how gamma scanning and hydraulic rating of the trayed column enabled engineers to identify the cause of the capacity reduction, and how reboiler leakage could lead to a significant reduction in column capacity.

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Entrainment Flooding and Weeping Velocities

Chemical Engineering — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Weeping and flooding phenomena set the vapor velocity in industrial distillation columns. Presented here are procedures for calculating flooding and weeping velocities in a four-pass sieve-tray column In

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Tower Doctor: Can the Cure be as Bad as the Illness?

Chemical Engineering — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

During a course that I was presenting in Houston one year, a participant asked me the following at the end of one of the sessions: “Do you have experience with BX-type wire-gauze structured packings?”

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PVDF Bubble Caps for Distillation Columns

Chemical Engineering — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Polymer components in column trays can avoid issues associated with corrosion of metal equipment Gujarat Alkalies & Chemicals Ltd. (GACL) — a major chemical producer in Gujarat state in western India —

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Pilot-Scale Distillation Process Design

Chemical Engineering — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The scale of distillation equipment has a major influence on its design, construction and operation. Pilot- and laboratory-scale distillation columns have inherent aspects, requirements and concerns that differ from commercial-scale columns. This article highlights the specific concerns imposed on the purpose, design and operation of small-scale distillation equipment, and discusses how these concerns manifest themselves in the actual equipment that is typically used. It also offers unique ideas that have been presented for small-scale equipment.

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Lessons Learned in the Classroom: Tower Pressure and Capacity

Chemical Engineering — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Henry Kister shares lessons learned from troubleshooting distillation towers In my courses, I discuss the effect of column operating pressure on flooding and capacity. There are two counteracting effects: The

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Tower Doctor – Downcomer Unsealing: A Correct Diagnosis Brings a Correct Cure

Chemical Engineering — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Following a distillation conference hosted by a simulation vendor, the delegates were transported by bus to a venue where the simulation vendor hosted a delicious barbecue. A gentleman sitting next to the

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Tower Doctor: X-Raying The Patient: Gamma Scanning Vapor Cross-Flow Channeling

Chemical Engineering — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In 1988, the author led a team to troubleshoot a chemical tower that was revamped to achieve a small increase in capacity (up to 4%) by increasing the tray hole areas from 8.5% to 13% of the active area. In

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Tower Doctor: Can Trash Interfere With a Cure?

Chemical Engineering — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Construction of new production units has an undesirable byproduct: trash. Sometimes the hard question is— Who will clean? The author was the startup superintendent on a new unit in an olefins plant in

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