CFD Investigation of Dry Tray Pressure Drop of Perforated Trays without Downcomer

Abstract

The dry tray pressure drop behaviors in trays without downcomer with different inclination of holes (standard, 75°, 60° and 45°) and tray thickness (2.5, 5, and 10 mm) are investigated. The trays are investigated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in Ansys Fluent^® software. 20 °C air was used to represent the gas phase with 20–50 m³/h flow rates. The column there are four trays with 7 mm of hole diameter.
The CFD results determined that the higher angle of the holes with respect to the tray causes smaller dry tray pressure drop and turbulence intensity in the gas flow. Furthermore, in 75° hole inclined perforated tray and the standard hole the dry tray pressure drop is similar. From the simulation results it is also determined that in case of higher tray thickness the dry tray pressure drop is lower.
On the basis of the CFD simulation results some correlations can be determined for the calculation of the dry tray pressure drop of the different trays.