Problems with laboratory towers
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Laboratory distillation uses glass columns, with glass spring packing arranged in a random manner. It is unknown what the separation efficiency of 1 meter of glass spring packing is; equivalent to how many theoretical plates?
You should ask the supplier of the filler for that; of course, it also depends on the specific material system.
Generally speaking, however, the plate height of traditional packing is between 0.6 and 0.8 m, while that of structured packing can reach 0.2 to 0.4 m. I’m not aware of the properties of your filler, but using a random stacking method won’t yield high efficiency; 0.5m can be used as a reference. But you can also ask the supplier for their opinion.
Since it is a laboratory, you can determine it based on calculation and experimental results.
The glass towers used in laboratories, which employ glass spring packing, have poor separation efficiency; I’ve used this type of packing before and found its performance to be very poor. Nowadays, stainless steel packing is used instead. As for how many theoretical tray sections this corresponds to, it’s impossible to say, as you haven’t specified the height of the packing layer. Moreover, the number of trays is generally determined through measurement. It’s normal for glass spring packing to be piled up unevenly – this is the case with all packed-bed towers – and there’s no need to pack the packing too tightly. If there are gaps between the packing elements, the analysis efficiency only decreases by about 5%, which has little impact overall. I still recommend that you replace the packing.
Under normal conditions, for glass spring packing, the theoretical number of theoretical plates is 15 per meter
The typical number of theoretical plates is 10-20 per m
It doesn’t seem that ideal; according to TianDa Beiyang’s data, it’s around 5/m.