Thermal Design Of Reboilers - Heat Exchangers Page 1 of 3

Donald Kiefer Distillery Heat Exchangers

Thermal Design Of Reboilers

Last Updated on Mon, 25 May 2015 |Heat Exchangers

For a single-component reboiler design , attention is focused upon the

mechanism ofheat and momentum transfer at the hot surface. In
multicomponent systems, the light components are preferentially vaporized at
the surface, and the process becomes limited by their rate of diffusion. The net
effect is to decrease the effective temperature difference between the hot
surface and the bulk of the boiling liquid. If one attempts to vaporize too high a
fraction of the feed liquid to the reboiler, the temperature difference between
surface and liquid is reduced to the point that nucleation and vapor generation
on the surface are suppressed and heat transfer to the liquid proceeds at the
lower rate associated with single-phase natural convection. The only safe
Reviews
procedure in design for wide-boiling-range mixtures is to vaporize such a limited
Beer Brewing Made Easy
fraction of the feed that the boiling point of the remaining liquid mixture is still
Making Wine At Home Is Easy
at least 5.5 C (10 F) below the surface temperature. Positive flow of the The Antibiotic Epidemic Antibiotic
unvaporized liquid through and out of the reboiler should be provided.
Popular Articles
Kettle Reboilers It has been generally assumed that kettle reboilers operate in
Miscellaneous Issues Problems
the pool boiling mode, but with a lower peak heat flux because of vapor binding
Floodpoint prediction Structured
and blanketing of the upper tubes in the bundle. There is some evidence that
Examples Use Auxotrophs Production
vapor generation in the bundle causes a high circulation rate through the Calcium sulphate scaling
bundle. The result is that, at the lower heat fluxes, the kettle reboiler actually Separation Section Packings
Thermal Design Tank Coils Heat
gives higher heat-transfer coefficients than a single tube. Present understanding
Tray Design Operation Structured
of the recirculation phenomenon is insufficient to take advantage of this in
Flow Regimes on Trays 641 common
design. Available nucleate pool boiling correlations are only very approximate, Implications emulsion regime
failing to account for differences in the nucleation characteristics of different Tray Efficiency Fundamentals
The Pot Still Home Distillation
surfaces. The Mostinski correlation [Eq. (5-102)] and the McNelly correlation
Compound still management Home
[Eq. (5-103)] are generally the best for single components or narrow-boiling-
Isomerization Process Refinery
range mixtures at low fluxes, though they may give errors of 40 to 50 percent. The Fractionating Still Home
Experimental heat-transfer coefficients for pool boiling of a given liquid on a Realtime PCR quantification

given surface should be used if available. The bundle peak heat flux is a function
of tube-bundle geometry, especially of tube-packing density; in the absence of Categories
better information, the Palen-Small modification [Eq. (5-108)] of the Zuber Refinery Distillation
Micro Organisms
maximum-heat-flux correlation is recommended.
Beverage Fermentation
A general method for analyzing kettle reboiler performance is by Fair and Klip, Structured Packings
Reboiler Duty
Chem. Eng. Prog. 79(3), 86 (1983). It is effectively limited to computer
Cell Culture
application. Fluid Phase
Practical Distillation
Kettle reboilers are generally assumed to require negligible pressure drop. It is
Batch Fermentation
important to provide good longitudinal liquid flow paths within the shell so that
Fractional Distillation
the liquid is uniformly distributed along the entire length of the tubes and Pressure Drop
excessive local vaporization and vapor binding are avoided. Heat Exchangers
Fermented Foods
This method may also be used for the thermal design of horizontal Thermal Conductivity
thermosiphon reboilers. The recirculation rate and pressure profile of the Home Distillation
Extractive Distillation
thermosiphon loop can be calculated by the methods of Fair [Pet. Refiner, 39(2),
Performance Ratio
105-123 (1960)].
Reflux Ratio
Boiling Water

http://www.kieferdistillery.us/heat-exchangers/thermal-design-of-reboilers.html 7/7/2015
Thermal Design Of Reboilers - Heat Exchangers Page 2 of 3
Vertical Thermosiphon Reboilers Vertical thermosiphon reboilers operate by Brewery Convention
Food Fermentation
natural circulation of the liquid from the still through the downcomer to the
Home Distillation
reboiler and of the two-phase mixture from the reboiler through the return Distillation Column
piping. The flow is induced by the hydrostatic pressure imbalance between the Acid Production
liquid in the down-comer and the two-phase mixture in the reboiler tubes. Corn Whiskey
Heat Transfer
Thermosiphons do not require any pump for recirculation and are generally
Fermentation Process
regarded as less likely to foul in service because of the relatively high two-phase Control Structure
velocities obtained in the tubes. Heavy components are not likely to accumulate Distillation System
in the thermosiphon, but they are more difficult to design satisfactorily than Distillation Column
Feed Composition
kettle reboilers, especially in vacuum operation. Several shortcut methods have
Extractive Distillation
been suggested for thermosiphon design, but they must generally be used with
caution. The method due to Fair (loc. cit.), based upon two-phase flow
correlations, is the most complete in the open literature but requires a computer
for practical use. Fair also suggests a shortcut method that is satisfactory for
preliminary design and can be reasonably done by hand.

Forced-Recirculation Reboilers In forced-recirculation reboilers, a pump is used

to ensure circulation of the liquid past the heattransfer surface. Force-
recirculation reboilers may be designed so that boiling occurs inside vertical
tubes, inside horizontal tubes, or on the shell side. For forced boiling inside
vertical tubes, Fair's method (loc. cit.) may be employed, making only the minor
modification that the recirculation rate is fixed and does not need to be balanced
against the pressure available in the downcomer. Excess pressure required to
circulate the two-phase fluid through the tubes and back into the column is
supplied by the pump, which must develop a positive pressure increase in the
liquid.

Fair's method may also be modified to design forced-recirculation reboilers with

horizontal tubes. In this case the hydrostatic-head-pressure effect through the
tubes is zero but must be considered in the two-phase return lines to the
column.

The same procedure may be applied in principle to design of forced-recirculation

reboilers with shell-side vapor generation. Little is known about two-phase flow
on the shell side, but a reasonable estimate of the friction pressure drop can be
made from the data of Diehl and Unruh [Pet. Refiner, 36(10), 147 (1957); 37
(10), 124 (1958)]. No void-fraction data are available to permit accurate
estimation of the hydrostatic or acceleration terms. These may be roughly
estimated by assuming homogeneous flow.

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Responses

http://www.kieferdistillery.us/heat-exchangers/thermal-design-of-reboilers.html 7/7/2015
Thermal Design Of Reboilers - Heat Exchangers Page 3 of 3
josefa
What causes vapor binding in heat exchangers?

Reply
3 years ago

Jenna
Why forced flow reboilers?

2 years ago
Reply

dennis
Do reboiler heat exchangers have tubes?

9 months ago
Reply

robert
What causes vapor binding in a heat exchanger?

Reply
3 months ago

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