Hydraulics of Kettle Reboiler Circuits On Distillation Columns

The proper design of the reboiling circuit plays a major role in ensuring the proper operation of the reboiler and distillation system. An approach for calculating pressure drops across a reboiler, and a column, is presented. Pressure drops are computed for various reboiler duties with different hydrocarbon systems. Head losses of the liquid phase, from the bottom of the column to the reboiler, are estimated. All hydraulic calculations are compared with experimental data obtained from commercial size distillation columns. A good agreement between the measured data and the calculated values was found.