0600 2569-4

1 Detail of a Shell ConSep

tray offering extremely high
capacity at high vapor and high
liquid loads.

Alliance of Technologies:

The Right Tray for

any Application
With the acquisition of Nutter Engineering (1998) and the strategic alliance
MARIO ROZA with Shell Global Solutions (2000), Sulzer Chemtech completed its product
DALE NUTTER portfolio of mass transfer components. Nutter Engineering has brought in its
SULZER CHEMTECH range of random packing as well as its tray technology with a competitive set
of bubbling devices for fractionation trays. The Shell mass transfer
technology package contains a complete line of high-performance trays.

All the new products have

been integrated into one con-
sistent product portfolio with the
the classical Sulzer Chemtech,
Metawa, Nutter and Shell Global
Solutions products (Fig. 1) com-
After an evaluation involving in-
dustrial acceptance, technical per-
formance, references and price,
already well-introduced structured plement each other into a full Sulzer Chemtech chose the rectan-
packing and the tray technology of range mass transfer portfolio with gular Nutter BDH Float Valve
Metawa Tray, a company which minimal overlap. (Fig. 2) as its standard moving
was acquired by Sulzer Chemtech and Nutter V-Grid as its stan-
in 1987. The portfolio is the result CONVENTIONAL TRAYS dard fixed valve. The valve portfo-
of the combination of the best of A conventional tray has one or lio is completed with the Metawa
all these innovative technologies more downcomers for liquid trans- Snap-in valve, predominantly
port to the tray below and an active used for Shell trays, a robust caged
area where vapor and liquid come round valve as well as a standard
2 A Float Valve with lateral vapor into contact. This active area can round valve, mainly used for
release and streamlined liquid flow; be equipped with a wide choice of replacement services for non-
the absence of valve rotation and bubbling devices. In todays indus- Sulzer Chemtech trays. Further-
wide legs reduce wear. try, the devices used are predomi- more, the Metawa Lip-Slot con-
nantly simple sieve holes, moving nection (Fig. 3) was chosen as the
and fixed valves, depending on the standard connection between the
required operating range. horizontal tray panels.

16 SULZER TECHNICAL REVIEW 4/2000 3974

 SHELL GLOBAL SOLUTIONS

Shell Global Solutions is an international technology business that

delivers integrated services that add to their customers bottom
lines. Working primarily in the oil, gas and process industries, they
give a competitive edge by helping to optimize plant and process
performance, formulate and develop products, and manage opera-
tional safety and environmental challenges more effectively.
The alliance with Sulzer Chemtech covers technologies for high-
performance trays, associated internals and phase separation
equipment.

HIGH-PERFORMANCE TRAYS tured packing) strongly depends to increase the capacity of a valve
Modifications to the standard on the application-related process tray here, Sulzer Chemtech can
bubbling devices can give higher requirements and is not subject of equip the active area with Nutter
vapor side tray capacity. An exam- this article. MVG fixed valves. The reduced
ple of such a device is the Mini V- entrainment of liquid to the tray
Grid MVG (Fig. 4). The Sulzer ATMOSPHERIC TO above these bubbling devices gives
Chemtech VortexTray, MVGT INTERMEDIATE PRESSURE 1015% capacity increase. Once
and the Shell Calming Section Most towers operating under pres- the maximum capacity with these
and HiFi trays (Fig. 5) create sures below 6 bar are limited by devices and conventional down-
higher capacity by eliminating the their vapor-side capacity. In order comers has been reached, the
downcomer sealing area. Addition-
al to the optimized downcomer con- 0600 2546-3

figuration it is possible to install

de-entrainment devices above the
active area. These devices capture
the liquid entrained in the vapor
phase at high vapor velocities and
transport it to the downcomers.
The Shell ConSep tray is an
example of such a tray.
3 The Metawa
A CONSISTENT PORTFOLIO Lip-Slot allows
One difficulty of Chemtechs wide fast and easy
variety of mass transfer products installation.
is to give them all a consistent
application range. In this range,
they should be most attractive
from the commercial and technical
point of view. Sulzer Chemtech has
chosen to position them in an
application matrix arranged by
operating pressure and specific liq-
uid load (Fig. 6). In this matrix, all
tray types, and also structured
packing, can be positioned.
For low pressure applications,
mainly random and structured
packing are applied. The choice of
internals (trays, random or struc-

SULZER TECHNICAL REVIEW 4/2000 17

 4 MVG Mini V-Grid fixed valve (right)
compared with sieve holes. MVG has a
streamlined liquid flow and lateral vapor
release. It gives the highest proven tray
efficiency/capacity profile while having
low pressure drop and good turn-down
capability.

downcomer configuration has to be HIGH-PRESSURE SOLUTIONS comes more difficult with increas-
optimized. In a first step, down- Most high-pressure applications ing ratio between vapor and liquid
comers are truncated as on the can also be associated with a high density.
Nutter MVGT. The area under the specific liquid load in the column. Traditionally sieve and valve trays
downcomers can be used as active They are in most cases limited by are used for these operating condi-
area, giving this tray 510% capac- their liquid-side capacity. This tions; the MVG fixed valves can
ity increase. means that trays used for these give a 510% capacity increase.
Sulzer Chemtech VortexTray, Shell towers have to be optimized with Additional 510% can be reached
Calming Section trays and Shell respect to their downcomers which with special downcomer configura-
Calming Section Plus trays have transport the liquid to the tray tions; in a first step with the Sulz-
an optimized number of small below. Due to the high vapor den- er Chemtech VortexTray with its
truncated downcomers, giving a sities and low liquid densities for special downcomer baffle, promot-
further 1015% capacity increase high-pressure operating condi- ing vapor disengagement. The
compared to the MVGT tray. The tions, special attention must also Shell HiFi and HiFi Plus trays
highest capacity can be reached be given to the vapor disengage- with their slotted downcomer
with the Shell ConSep trays. ment in downcomers. This be- troughs can further increase tower
capacity by 1015%.

THE GLYCOL EXCEPTION

NUTTER ENGINEERING An exception to the rule of high
pressure and high liquid load are
Since Earl Nutter developed the first modern valve tray in 1945, Nut- glycol contactors. They are used to
ter Engineering continuously developed new cost-effective tray reduce the water content of natur-
designs and introduced them to industry with commercial-scale inde- al and fuel gas streams. They usu-
pendent tests. Developed in the 70s, self-retained Float Valve and ally run at pressures between 50
V-Grid fixed-valve trays set industry performance and mainte- and 100 bar. The liquid load in
nance standards. Independent testing in 1998 proved the superior these towers is very low. Until the
performance of the optimized Nutter Mini V-Grid MVG fixed-valve end of the seventies, bubble cap
tray. and floating valve trays were used
Sulzer acquired the innovative Nutter tray and Nutter Ring ran- for these applications. Since then,
dom packing technology that same year to complete their mass trans- many towers have been revamped
fer component products portfolio. with Mellapak structured pack-
ing, which is particularly suited for

18 SULZER TECHNICAL REVIEW 4/2000

 5 Shell HiFi trays are designed to handle large liquid loads. Their design
maximizes downcomer capacity while maintaining a high active area for vapor.

0600 2569-3

these conditions capacity in-

creases of 80100% could be
reached in many cases.
MellapakPlus structured pack-
ing lead to a further increase by FOR MORE DETAILS
2030%. In order to reach these Sulzer Chemtech AG
capacity levels, MellapakPlus and Mario Roza
its distributor have been combined Postfach 65
with a Shell Mistmat and Swirl- CH-8404 Winterthur
deck combination to prevent the Switzerland
loss of glycol over the top of the col- Telephone +41 (0)52-262 60 08
umn. Ultimate capacity is reached Fax +41 (0)52-262 00 67
with Shell Swirl Tube trays. E-mail [email protected]
These trays, which have a co-cur-
rent contacting space for vapor and
liquid, give a further 3040% ca- 6 The Application matrix; arranged by application range going downwards
pacity increase. in the table leads to a product with, if the design is optimized, a higher capacity
for a given tower diameter.
PERFORMANCE WITH
Increasing Low to atmospheric Atmospheric to High liquid load, Glycol
EXPERIENCE capacity pressure, intermediate pressure, high pressure (low liquid load,
low and intermediate low and intermediate high pressure)
The alliance of Shell Global Solu- liquid load liquid load
tions technology and the technolo-
Conventional trays, Conventional tray Conventional tray Conventional tray
gy from the companies that have Nutter Ring
been integrated into Sulzer Chem-
Mellapak MVG tray MVG (T) tray Mellapak + Mistmat
tech provides a complete range of
solutions with recognized benefits MellapakPlus MVGT tray Calming Section tray, MellapakPlus +
for the customers. These highly VortexTray Mistmat + Swirldeck

dependable mass transfer prod- Calming Section tray, HiFi tray Swirl Tube tray
VortexTray
ucts are the result of profound
operational and design experience Calming Section HiFi Plus tray
Plus tray
and will be the basis for further
innovations. ConSep tray ConSep tray

SULZER TECHNICAL REVIEW 4/2000 19