Table of Contents

1 DISTILLATION ................................................................................................................................ 1
1.1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 1
1.2 TYPES OF DISTILLATION: .................................................................................................... 2
2 TRAY EFFICIENCY ........................................................................................................................ 2
2.1 TYPES OF TRAY EFFICIENCY .............................................................................................. 2
2.1.1 Overall Efficiency: .............................................................................................................. 3
2.1.2 Murphree Vapor Efficiency: ................................................................................................ 3
3 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EFFICIENCIES ............................................................................... 4

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1 DISTILLATION
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Distillation is a widely used method for separating mixtures based on differences in the conditions
required to change the phase of components of the mixture. To separate a mixture of liquids, the liquid
can be heated to force components, which have different boiling points, into the gas phase. The gas is
then condensed back into liquid form and collected. Repeating the process on the collected liquid to
improve the purity of the product is called double distillation. Although the term is most commonly
applied to liquids, the reverse process can be used to separate gases by liquefying components using
changes in temperature and/or pressure.

Many of the tall, thin towers which may be seen in an oil refinery or chemical plant are distillation
columns. The most common column diameter is about 2.5 m, but 6 m diameter is commonplace and
towers of 12 m dia have been built. Column heights may be as much as 30 m.

The advantages of distillation are:

 High purity products

 Economies of scale
 Well-established technology and competitive supply of equipment
 Use of low temperature, low cost energy
 Well suited for energy integration into the surrounding process.

In a distillation column liquid and vapor are contacted while passing over and through trays (sometimes
referred to as plates). In a theoretical analysis of the column performance such as the McCabe-Thiele
method, the trays are assumed to operate at maximum efficiency. This means that the vapor and liquid
phases are assumed to reach equilibrium as they interact over the plate. However, in practice there are
many reasons why the vapor and liquid phases will not reach equilibrium as they pass.

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1.2 TYPES OF DISTILLATION:

Types of distillation Includes:

 Simple distillation.
 Fractional distillation.
 Steam distillation.
 Vacuum distillation.

2 TRAY EFFICIENCY
For the analysis of theoretical stage required for the distillation, it is assumed that the vapor leaving
each tray is in equilibrium with the liquid leaving the same tray and the trays are operating at 100%
efficiency. In practice, the trays are not perfect.

There are deviations from ideal conditions. The equilibrium with temperature is sometimes reasonable
for exothermic chemical reaction but the equilibrium with respect to mass transfer is not often valid.
The deviation from the ideal condition is due to:

 Insufficient time of contact

 Insufficient degree of mixing.

To achieve the same degree of desired separation, more trays will have to be added to compensate for
the lack of perfect separability. The concept of tray efficiency may be used to adjust the actual number
of trays required. The concept of tray efficiency quantifies the difference between the maximum
theoretical or equilibrium performance and the actual performance achieved.

2.1 TYPES OF TRAY EFFICIENCY

There are several different measures of tray efficiency with each measure highlighting different
performance issues. The three main tray efficiency metrics are overall tray efficiency, Murphree Vapor
efficiency and Baur Efficiency which are described below:

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2.1.1 Overall Efficiency:

The overall tray efficiency, EO is defined as:

𝑁𝑜 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑦𝑠
𝐸° =
𝑁𝑜 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑦𝑠

It is applied for the whole column. Every tray is assumed to have the same efficiency. The overall
efficiency depends on the:

 Geometry and design of the contacting trays

 Flow rates and flow paths of vapor and liquid streams
 Compositions and properties of vapor and liquid streams

Overall tray efficiency assumes that all trays have the same performance. This makes it a simple metric
from which the total number of trays required can be determined for a given distillation column.
However, in practice not all trays will share the same efficiency.

2.1.2 Murphree Vapor Efficiency:

The Murphree vapor efficiency measures performance of a single tray by considering the composition
of the vapor phase as it enters and leaves a given tray. It is the ratio of the difference between the actual
start and finish composition for a component, to the difference between the start and theoretical finish
composition for the component as shown below.

The efficiency of the tray can also be calculated based on semi-theoretical models which can be
interpreted by the Murphree Tray Efficiency EM. In this case it is assumed that the vapor and liquid
between trays are well-mixed and have uniform composition. It is defined for each tray according to
the separation achieved on each tray based on either the liquid phase or the vapor phase. For a given
component, it can be expressed as:

Based on Liquid Phase:

𝑥𝑛 − 𝑥𝑛−1
𝐸𝑀𝐿 =
𝑥𝑛∗ − 𝑥𝑛−1

Based on Vapor Phase:

𝑦𝑛 − 𝑦𝑛−1
𝐸𝑀𝑉 =
𝑦𝑛∗ − 𝑦𝑛−1

Where;

 yn is the concentration of the vapor at a specific point in plate.

 yn* the concentration of the vapor that would be in equilibrium

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Since yn cannot be greater than yn* the local efficiency cannot be greater than 1.00 or 100%.

3 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EFFICIENCIES

A graphical method in the McCabe-Thiele diagram can be used to determine the actual number of
trays when the Murphree tray efficiency is known. In Fig,a diagram is given for-an actual plate as
compared with an ideal plate. The triangle acd represents an ideal plate and the smaller triangle abe
the actual plate.

For the case shown, the Murphree efficiency EM = 0.60 = ba/ca. The dashed line going through
point b is drawn so that ba/ca for each tray is 0.60. The trays are stepped off using this efficiency,
and the total number of steps gives the actual number of trays needed. The reboiler is considered to
be one theoretical tray, so the true equilibrium curve is used for this tray as shown. 6.0 actual trays
plus a reboiler are obtained.

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