Selection of tower type for the fractionation tower in PX units
Thread Content
In modern large-scale PX plants, what type of columns are used for the distillation in the benzene column, toluene column, xylene columns, and heavy aromatic hydrocarbons column? Is it mainly a packed tower or mainly a plate tower? I only know that 2 of them use sieve tray towers; I’m not sure if any use packed tower systems Why is a sieve plate tower chosen? Is it a requirement from the technology patent holder? Because at present, most of the PX plants in our country rely on imported technology
Currently, most distillation columns in large PX plants use (high-efficiency) floating valve trays. For xylene columns and stripping columns, where the liquid load is high, UOP’s MD (multi-drop) patented trays (which are essentially sieve tray trays) are generally recommended. Packed towers are rarely used in the design of new PX plants, but some may be used in retrofitted plants.
It seems that sieve plate towers are relatively rare; almost all are high-efficiency floating valve towers