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Distillation Column


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#1 acbaker

acbaker

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Posted 29 April 2008 - 07:44 AM

Hello,
I am looking to design a packed distillation column and the information is very limited. I'm looking to get a general idea of a column's height and diameter to fit a separation of Methanol and Water. The column is going to be bought from a surplus store and is not exactly known what media will be in the column or what size. I have already done some calculations and came up with 10 ideal stages for this process. It is going to be a relatively small column. Are there any generic ratios for height to diameter that anyone knows of? I know they don't normally teach you that type of thing in school but if someone has many years of experience they might be able to give me a better idea. Here is the information I know right now.

Separation of 90% Methanol and Water solution.
Methanol off the top is 98% pure
10 ideal stages
HETP is normally somewhere between 1 - 3 m
Flow is very small

Thank you.

#2 riven

riven

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Posted 29 April 2008 - 08:20 AM

It is going to be very difficult to develop a solution without the mass flow. Further I strongly suggest that you get the media uncertainty sorted as hETP values of 1-3 with produce widely different designs.

A few questions though.
Why a packed column, student experiemnts?
Have you calculated actual stages?
Surely when calculating the ideal stages you could easily work out the diameter?

Finally I do not know what school you are in but this is a problem that you should be able to sort as a third year in Chem Eng. Distillation is bread and butter for us. So if you are not in chem Eng, you may contact your local group/uni?




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