The impact of heat transfer on Murphree tray efficiency

This work features the experimental determination of Murphree tray efficiencies on a diabatic (heattransferring) distillation tray. The present investigation, focussing on the impact of heat transfer on sieve trays, is part of a long-term project on Heat Integrated Distillation Columns (HIDiC). Tray efficiencies have been determined experimentally for the methanol/water system in a 150 mm diameter distillation column with a heat-tranferring tray. The tray was operated in both heating and cooling modes, with heat fluxes up to 50 kW/m(2) and 100 kW/m(2) respectively. The experimental data from the diabatic experiments were compared with adiabatic data obtained from the same column and were correlated with the vapour velocity and the heat flux to/from the tray.