Fouling and foaming are frequently at the top of a list of “well known but little understood” problems in distillation towers. The difficulty is its “unpredictable” characteristics which are hard to repeat or correlate in lab experiments or industrial operations. Chemical reactions and surface phenomena in fouling and foaming systems can further complicate their predictability. This presentation will focus on the “main” towers, which are typically the first separation unit to handle the effluent streams from the reactors, crackers or furnaces, in refining and petrochemical processes. Several techniques for dealing with the unpredictable problems are presented, with emphasis on monitoring of tower conditions, selection of tower internals, pre-treatment of re-cycle streams.

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