A Hydraulic and Feasibility Study of New Tower Internal in Gas Processing Plants

A new tower internal, which is called CSE, is presented. The CSE is composed of a nozzle perforated in its bottom along the entire periphery and equipped with a multi vane axial swirler at the inlet and hollow cylindrical separator at the outlet of the nozzle. According to the experimental work for obtaining the necessary hydraulic information of the CSE, which is used for preliminary design of a separation column, the CSE showed a stable operation over the wide rage of gas/liquid ratio. However, it caused large pressure drop due to the high gas velocity which should carry liquid droplets through the element. The high pressure drop may cause problems in energy recovery and the application of the CSE can be limited to the high pressure columns. Assuming that the tray efficiency of the CSE is the same with the existing separation columns, the results of the column design showed the size reduction of the column diameters by 30 to $40\%$ and investment cost saving, depending on operating conditions. The application of the CSE to separation column may also contribute to the de-bottlenecking the existing column.