The downcomer from the bottom tray is submerged in a seal pan (see Fig. 8.3), to preserve its downcomer seal. I always set the horizontal dimension between the over-flow lip of the seal pan, (dimension y) the downcomer at four inches, so I never have to worry about restricting liquid flow from the bottom tray. [...]
If a tower has a history of tray deck damage due to pressure surge or high liquid level, the mechanical integrity of the trays should be upgraded. This is done by the use of shear clips, as shown in Fig. 8.4. The use of shear clips is not the best way to improve the mechanical [...]
At a Gulf Coast refinery, the reboiler thermosyphon circulation could not be reestablished after a turnaround. The tower was reopened and a lessthan-alive contract employee was found stuck in the reboiler draw-off nozzle. At the Good Hope Refinery (when I was the technical manager), we once left a complete scaffold (poles, boards, everything) in the [...]
Contract maintenance workers often will not replace the tray manways unless the tray manway is adjacent to a tower external manway. They reason that once the tray manways that are visible from the tower manway are closed, there is no way for someone to inspect the other trays. This problem is not just common—it is [...]
Most trays have outlet weirs devoted to maintaining the downcomer seal. But some trays have inlet weirs too, or inlet weirs, but no outlet weirs. A sketch of an inlet weir is shown in Fig. 8.2. Note the horizontal distance between the downcomer and the inlet weir (dimension x). This distance ought to be equal [...]
The bottom edge of the downcomer from the tray above should be 0.25 to 0.5 in below the top edge of the weir of the tray below. This is called a positive downcomer seal. Without a positive downcomer seal, vapor will flow up the downcomer and displace the downflowing liquid. This will cause flooding due [...]
The vertical edges to the downcomers are bolted to bars welded to the vessel wall. These are called, “downcomer bolting bars.” Gaskets are often used to tightly seal the edge of the tray downcomer to these bars. If the bolts are loose or if the gaskets are missing, vapor will blow into the downcomer and [...]
For smaller diameter towers a visual check of tray deck levelness is sufficient. For two-pass trays, a small diameter tower is less than 8 ft. For single-pass trays, a diameter of less than 6 ft is small.For towers of 10 ft or more in diameter, check for out-of-levelness of a tray check using a carpenter’s [...]
Reboilers are sometimes inserted into the bottom of a tower. These are called “stab-in” reboilers. It is not a terribly good idea, because it makes it more difficult to fix a leaking or fouled reboiler without opening the tower itself. However, the “kettle” reboiler, shown in Fig. 7.7, has essentially the same process performance characteristics [...]
Figure 7.6 shows a once-through forced-circulation reboiler. Such a reboiler differs from a thermosyphon reboiler in that it has a pump to force circulation, rather than relying on natural or thermosyphon circulation. This extra pump seems rather wasteful—and it is. The great advantage of forced circulation is that careful calculation of the pressure drop through [...]