A packed bed is considered a distillation column that consist of a hollow tube, pipe, or other vessel filled with packaging. Distillation is the acting of separating an initial mixed of components in a solution into vapor phase and liquid phase using their boiling point temperatures to evaporate the one with the lowest. Also, a distillation column uses a condenser at the top that takes the vapor phase component and drop the temperature to change it back to liquid phase and be collected as also having some part going back to the distillation column known as reflux. At the bottoms a reboiler is found that heats up the liquid phase component coming out from the column to evaporate and re-enter the column is known as reflux as well. The two reflux from the condenser and reboiler are related together and a the term reflux ratio is for the account of the two streams going back to the distillation column.
Methanol was separated from water using a distillation column with 10 trays. For a scale up specification of 100 Kmol/hr, the reflux ratio was about 3.5 and about 98% methanol was recovered in the distillate. Increasing the feed temperature does not impact the composition of the distillate significantly. However, increasing the feed temperature requires higher number of trays without changing the reflux ratio. At a higher reflux ratio, a smaller number of trays is required. Our design did not take in consideration the quality of the trays. If the industrial scale design were to be performed, the quality of the trays will play a major role in the performance of the column. Poor quality trays can cause fouling, and this can reduce the efficiency of the trays and the overall performance of the column.