Curious question Wind impact on column capacity?

[mrtangent]

I've never seen this but a thread a while ago prompted my thought on this.

We pay a lot of attention to the tray levelness / distributor levelness for column installations and say it impacts performance when we get it wrong. On many of the columns on our site move a lot in the wind (as part of their design).

Has anyone ever seen this impact performance
(I suspect not but i am curious).

 

[epoisses]

Never observed anything like this.
What impact you do expect, separation efficiency or capacity?
I could imagine that if a column is close to, e.g., downcomer flooding, a temporary further increase of the DC level due to tower movements might just tip the scales and make the tower flood prematurely, but that would be a matter of just a few cm's.
In terms of separation efficiency I don't see how movements might impact, in any case the liquid on a tray at good tower throughput is not a peaceful lake with tranquilizing bubbles gently flowing upward, it's quite a messy mix of gas and liquid and a bit of movement would not make a significant change, as far as I imagine intuitively.
If your tray is tilted permanently though, due to faulty installation, you would create maldistribution and sub-optimum operation.

 

[liberoSimulation]

Never seen as well
Column vendors are usually considering the wind affect in the design.
From experience, I have seen so many tall columns with high windy weather, and no effect on the distillation or other parts of the columns.

Usually, an average wind speed of the area is given to the Vendors as to count for the affect, if any, into the design.

Hope this would help

 

[StressGuy]

Guidelines I've seen used for tower design are to allow up to 6" lateral deflection for every 100 feet in height. That's a pretty small angle, so I wouldn't expect you to see much in the way of a slope across a tray due to rotation of the tower around its base.

Edward L. Klein
Pipe Stress Engineer
Houston, Texas

"All the world is a Spring"

All opinions expressed here are my own and not my company's.