Chemical Engineering and Processing 48 (2009) 145151

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Chemical Engineering and Processing:

Process Intensication
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cep

CFD simulation of hydrodynamics of valve tray

Xin Gang Li a,b , De Xin Liu c,d , Shi Min Xu a,b, , Hong Li a
a

School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, TianJin University, Tianjin 300072, China
National Engineering Research Center for Distillation Technology, TianJin University, Tianjin 300072, China
c
China Textile Industrial Engineering Institute, Beijing 100037, China
d
China Textile and Chemical Fiber Engineering CORP., Beijing 100037, China
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 25 April 2007
Received in revised form 18 February 2008
Accepted 1 March 2008
Available online 15 March 2008
Keywords:
Computational uid dynamics (CFD)
Valve tray
Liquid hold-up
Clear liquid height

a b s t r a c t
A transient computational uid dynamics (CFD) model was developed to predict the hydraulics of a full
open valve tray. The model studied the three-dimensional two-phase ow of gas and liquid in the Eulerian framework. Based on the clear liquid height measured on a full open valve tray, a new correlation
of liquid hold-up was developed, and the interphase momentum transfer term was calculated. Several
simulations were carried out for a rectangular full open valve tray with varying characters of system. The
CFD simulations reect chaotic tray hydrodynamics. The predicted results were in good agreement with
the experimental data.
2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The valve trays are widely used as phase-contacting devices
in distillation, absorption columns. The description of the hydrodynamics of valve trays is of great importance in industrial
practice. Based on the hydrodynamics of valve trays, the separation efciency and overall tray performance will be predicted,
for a given set of operating conditions, tray geometry and system properties. Hydrodynamics of valve trays was reported by
many open literatures [15]. In general, published literature correlations for tray hydrodynamics were largely empirical. An impasse
that hindered the further improvement of these devises is the
poor understanding of the complex behaviors of the two-phase
ows and operating conditions inside the tray for given geometry.
In recent years, there are considerable academic and industrial
interests in the use of computational uid dynamics (CFD) to model
two-phase ows in some chemical engineering equipments. The
volume-of-uid (VOF) technique can be used for a prior determination of multiphase ow on structure packing. Szulczewska et al.
[6] simulated gasliquid counter-current ow in a plate-type structured packing. Gu et al. [7] developed a two-phase ow CFD model
using the VOF method to predict the hydrodynamics of falling lm

Corresponding author at: School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, TianJin University, Tianjin 300072, China. Tel.: +86 22 27404701; fax: +86 22 27404705.
E-mail address: xusm2002@163.com (S.M. Xu).
0255-2701/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cep.2008.03.001

ow on structured packing. Ataki et al. [8] simulated the liquid ow

structure on a structured packing element and liquid redistribution
at the node of structure packing with the VOF model.
There are many attempts so far to simulate sieve tray hydrodynamics using CFD. Yu et al. [9] and Liu et al. [10] ignored the
variations in the direction of gas ow along the height of the dispersion to simulate the two-phase ow behavior, and only the
hydrodynamics of the liquid ow was obtained. The interphase
momentum exchange (drag) coefcient was required to model
the hydrodynamics of multiphase ow on sieve tray. Fischer and
Quarini [11] attempted to describe the three-dimensional transient
gasliquid hydrodynamics, by assuming a constant drag coefcient
of 0.44, which was appropriate for uniform bubbly ow. This drag
coefcient was not appropriate for description of the hydrodynamics of sieve trays operating in either the froth or spray regimes.
Krishna et al. [12] and van Batten and Krishna [13] described the
hydrodynamics of sieve trays by estimating a new drag coefcient correlation for a swarm of large bubbles on the basis of the
correlation of Bennett et al. [14] for the liquid hold-up. Because
the correlation of Bennett et al. over-predicted the liquid hold-up
fraction in froth regime, Gesit et al. [15] used the liquid hold-up
correlation of Colwell [16], which worked well in the froth regime,
to predict the ow patterns and hydraulics of a commercial-scale
sieve tray.
At present, CFD is becoming a powerful research and design tool
in chemical engineering. But there are not any reports about simulating the hydrodynamics of valve trays by using CFD. The major
difculty for this is that valve oats as valve hole gas velocity chang-

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X.G. Li et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 48 (2009) 145151

ing. When the velocity of gas passing through the valve hole is larger
than a certain value-the critical valve hole velocity, the valve is full
open. It means that valve lifts with the maximum extent and it
does not oat. In this condition, CFD can be used to simulate the
hydrodynamics of valve trays.
In this paper, a three-dimensional transient CFD model was
developed within the two-phase Euler framework for hydrodynamics of a rectangular full open valve tray. For the rise of a swarm of
large bubbles in the gasliquid bubbly ow on full open valve tray,
an appropriate liquid hold-up correlation was required to calculate
the interphase momentum exchange coefcient by correlation of
Krishna et al. Therefore, at rst, a new correlation of liquid hold-up
of full open valve tray was developed based on the experimental
clear liquid height. Then, simulations were carried out with varying supercial gas velocity, liquid weir loads and weir heights when
valves are full open. The objective of this work was to examine the
extent to which CFD models can be used as an investigative and
design tool in industrial practice.
2. Experimental
The experimental set-up was shown in Fig. 1, and a big hole sieve
tray (12) was installed to conrm gas uniform distribution. The
valve tray geometry used in the experiments was shown in Fig. 2,
and there were 14 standard V1 Glitsch valves (diameter = 48 mm,
hole diameter = 38 mm, triangular pitch = 100 mm, lift = 8 mm and
fractional hole area on tray = 0.067).
A calibrated Pitot tube (10) was used to measure the gas ow
rate, and the supercial gas velocity, Us , used in the experiments
ranged from 0.65 to 1.1 m/s to ensure valve full open. The liquid ow rate was controlled by a calibrated liquid owmeter (4),
and the liquid loads per weir length, QL /W, ranged from 0.0032 to
0.0039 m3 /(s m). Various weir height, hW of 40, 50, 60 mm were
used in the experiments.
To measure the clear liquid height, hcl , the liquid on the tray
was allowed to drain to the tray beneath. For the airwater system used in the experiments, the clear liquid height was deducted
dynamic head measured at ve different positions. One limb of

Fig. 2. The rectangular valve tray used in the experiment (unit: mm). The hole
area = 0.0156 m2 , fraction hole area to bubbling area = 8.86%.

each manometer was mounted ush with the tray oor and the
other was connected to the manifold which was connected to the
air space above the liquid on the tray.
3. CFD model development
The model considered the gas and liquid phases as interpenetrating continuum having separate transport equations in the
Eulerian framework. Within simulations, the gas phase was treated
as the disperse phase, and the liquid phase was taken as the continuous phase. The disperse phase of gasliquid bubbly ows on
the valve tray consisted of gas bubbles, gas jets and a combination
thereof, and the two phases Eulerian simulation approach chosen
here can work well in calculation the disperse phase. The transport
equations of gas (subscript G) and liquid (subscript L) phases were
shown as follow.
G + L = 1

(1)

(G G )
+ (G G VG ) = 0
t

(2)

(L L )
+ (L L VL ) = 0
t

(3)

(G G VG ) + (G (G VG VG ))
t
= G pG MG + (G eff,G ( VG + ( VG )T ))

(4)

(L L VL ) + (L (L VL VL ))
t
= L pL + ML + (L eff,L ( VL + ( VL )T ))

Fig. 1. Simplied diagram of the experimental set-up to measure hydrodynamics

of rectangular valve tray. 1, valve tray; 2, storage tank for liquid; 3, liquid pump; 4,
liquid owmeter; 5, downcomer; 6, weir (exchangeable); 7, liquid lled stainless
tube; 8, liquid outlet; 9, gas supply; 10, Pitot tube; 11, valves; 12, sieve tray.

(5)

The same pressure eld was assumed for both phases, which
is pG = pL . MG and ML in above equations are momentum transfer
term of the gas and liquid phase, and equal the sum of forces on it.
In our simulation, they include the interphase momentum transfer
terms and per phase momentum transfer term.
For continued gas ow in valves, MG is only affected by the
weight of valve and liquid on valve, and there is not any interphase
momentum transfer, and the equation is
MG = mvalve g + L (hcl hvalve )Avalve g

(6)

X.G. Li et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 48 (2009) 145151

147

where hcl is the clear liquid height computed by Eq. (13) developed
as follow, and hvalve is the height of valve.
For gasliquid bubbly ows out of valve in experiment, the interphase momentum transfer term includes drag force, virtual mass
force and lift force. According to Krishna et al. [12] and van Baten
and Krishna [13], the other forces compared to drag force, do not
affect the bubbly ows greatly and can be ignored in this paper. To
the gas as the disperse phase in bubbly ow, the equation for MG is
MG = MGL =

3 CD
G L |VG VL |(VG VL )
4 dG

(7)

where CD is the interphase momentum transfer (drag) coefcient.

For the rise of a swarm of large bubbles in the churn turbulent
regime, Krishna et al. [12] estimated the drag coefcient as
CD =

4 L G
1
gdG 2
3
L
V

(8)

slip

where Vslip is the slip velocity of the bubble swarm with respect to
the liquid, and is shown as
Vslip =

Us
average

(9)

Substituting Eqs. (9) and (8) into Eq. (7)

Fig. 4. The grid map of CFD simulation.

them. In the x-, y- and z-direction, grid cells of 5 mm size were chosen. But at the round of valves, GAMBIT (the tool of making grids of
FLUENT) automatic changed the grid size to 5 mm 5 mm 4 mm
to cover the all valves by two complete cells. The total number of
unstructured cells within the computational space was 419,300,
and they were shown in Fig. 4.
To solve the equations of continuity and momentum for the
two-uid mixture, appropriate boundary conditions for each phase
should be specied at all inside and external boundaries of the
simulated domain.

average 2

MGL = G (L G )g

(G

Us2

|VG VL |(VG VL )

(10)

One advantage of using Eq. (10) as interphase momentum

exchange term lies in that the bubble size does not need to be specaverage
ied. For the average liquid hold-up fraction, G
on the valve
trays, a new correlation would be regressed based on experimental
data as follow.
Turbulence was taken into account for the mixture phase,
including continuous phase and the dispersed gas phase. The well
known single-phase standard k turbulence model was applied
to model the turbulence phenomena of the gasliquid ow, using
standard single-phase parameters C = 0.09, C1 = 1.44, C2 = 1.92,
 k = 1 and  = 103. A whole tray was modeled, as shown in Fig. 3.
One of the geometry modeling problems was to specify the detail
geometry of valves, and a method was used to overcome this problem that the valves were considered as columns. The top face of
column was cover of valve, and the foot face was hole and a part of
tray. Except the top and foot faces, other faces of column were used
as interior faces of solution domain and all phases can pass through

3.1. Liquid inlet

For our experimental rectangular valve tray, a uniform liquid
inlet velocity prole was recommended.
UL,in =

QL
hap LW

(11)

Only liquid entered through the downcomer clearance, so the

liquid-volume fraction was taken as unity.
3.2. Gas inlet
The gas inlet holes of the model were captured by cell faces, and
a uniform gas velocity was supposed.
UG,in =

QG
Nh Ahole

(12)

The gas-volume fraction at the inlet holes was specied to be

unity.
3.3. Liquid and gas outlet
The liquid- and gas-outlet boundaries were specied as pressure
boundaries with volume fraction specications. The specications
assumed that only liquid or gas leaves the simulation geometry,
respectively.
3.4. Wall

Fig. 3. The calculation space and boundaries in CFD simulation.

All wall for two phases were specied as no-slip wall boundary.
A commercial CFD package FLUENT was used to solve the equations of continuity and momentum for the two-uid mixture. This
package is a nite volume solver, and all variables are evaluated at
the cell center. The pressurevelocity coupling was obtained using
the phase coupled SIMPLE algorithm. A fully implicit backward differencing scheme was used for the time integration.
At ambient pressure conditions, air and water were used as the
gas and liquid phases, respectively. At the start of a simulation,
the tray conguration shown in Fig. 3 was lled with a uniform
gasliquid dispersion (50% liquid hold-up) except space in the

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X.G. Li et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 48 (2009) 145151

Fig. 5. Transient simulation convergence as indicated by a plot of clear liquid height

vs. time.

valves, which was full of gas phase. The time increment used in
the simulations was 0.001 s. During the simulation the clear liquid
height in the simulation system was monitored, and quasi-steady
state was assumed to prevail if the value of the clear liquid height
remained constant for an enough long period. Typically, steady
state is achieved in about 15 s from the start of the simulations,
as shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 6. Calculated values of clear liquid height, hcl , using new correlation compared
against experiment hcl .

Eq. (13) [14], is found.

hcl = e hW + C

 Q 2/3 
L

(13)

e

The format assumed for the C and e correlation are

C = a1 + a2 exp[a3 hW ]



G
L G

a5 

(14)

4. Results and discussion

e = exp a4 Us

In this paper, an average liquid hold-up correlation of full open

valve was developed. Like sieve tray, the clear liquid height of valve
tray is mainly affected by the supercial gas velocity, liquid load
and weir height. If a new correlation of clear liquid height on full
open valve tray is obtained, and the liquid hold-up, which is e in

Based on the experimental data, the correlation was developed and the undetermined parameters (a15 ) were conrmed,
a1 = 0.012, a2 = 0.034, a3 = 110, a4 = 1.44 and a5 = 0.74. In Fig. 6, the
experimental clear liquid height data was plotted vs. the calculated
value using the new correlation. The average error was 1.4%, and the

Fig. 7. Snapshots of the front view of the simulations at a supercial gas velocity, Us = 0.64 m/s; weir height hW = 0.05 m; liquid weir load QL /W = 0.0032 m3 /(s m).

(15)

X.G. Li et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 48 (2009) 145151

149

Fig. 8. Snapshots of the top view of the simulations at a supercial gas velocity, Us = 0.64 m/s; weir height hW = 0.05 m; liquid weir load QL /W = 0.0032 m3 /(s m).

mean error was 4.7%. The coefcient which minimize the standard
deviation gave the following equations for e ,

e = exp 1.44Us



G
L G

0.74

(16)

Based on correlation of liquid hold-up, several simulations about

two-phase hydrodynamics of full open valve tray were carried out
with varying simulation congures.
Figs. 7 and 8 present snapshots of the front view and top view
of the computation results. The chaotic behavior can be seen from
front and top views. The two-phase region above the tray can be
divided into liquid continuous region and gas continuous region.
Near the tray, gas is dispersed by the continued liquid after thrust-

Fig. 9. Clear liquid height as a function of the supercial gas velocity.

ing out valves, and liquid hold-up decreases as height increases. At

transient of two regions, there has no clear interface between gas
and liquid phase. In the gas continuous region, the liquid diminishes rapidly, leaving most space of the tray to be lled with the
gas.
To validate the simulation results against the experimental data,
clear liquid height was computed, and compared with experimental data, and the Dhulesia correlation [4] shown as follow:
2/3

hcl = 0.42 1/3 hW

 =

QL /W
Us




L

G

(17)
(18)

Clear liquid height is dened as the height of liquid that would

exist on the tray in the absence of vapor ow. After a sufciently
long time interval once quasi-steady state condition was estab-

Fig. 10. Clear liquid height as a function of the liquid weir load.

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X.G. Li et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 48 (2009) 145151

Fig. 11. Clear liquid height as a function of the weir height.

liquid ow rate in Fig. 11. Clear liquid heights predicted by CFD

simulations have the same changing trends as experimental data.
A major advantage of the extension to the two-phase modeling
is the availability of the gas phase and liquid phase ow proles
respectively, which is needed in simulating the interphase mass
transfer, and calculating the Murphree tray efciency. Rahimi et al.
[17] predicted the Murphree point efciencies and tray efciencies of sieve tray based on gasliquid two-phase hydrodynamics
performance by CFD.
Proles of the gas-phase vertical-component velocity on different height elevations are shown in Fig. 12. Closed to the tray oor,
the maximum values of oscillations correspond to the location of
valve holes, and there are two holes encountered in sweeping from
the liquid inlet to the liquid outlet at y = 0 m. The magnitude of these
oscillations decreases with increasing heights above the tray oor.
As soon as the weir height is crossed, the gas velocity decreases
owing to the increase in the cross-sectional area available for gas
ow.
Fig. 13 illuminates proles of the liquid phase transverse component velocity on different height sections. Unlike proles of the
gas phase vertical velocity, the minimum values of oscillations correspond to the location of valve holes. The reason is that the liquid
phase is affected by high speed gas thrusting out valves, and is accelerated between valves. As height increases, the interval of liquid
phase transverse component velocity reduces.
5. Conclusions

Fig. 12. Gas V velocity proles at different elevations above tray, y = 0 m.

lished, the clear liquid height was calculated as the tray spacing
multiplied by the volume average of the liquid-volume fraction.
Figs. 911 show the comparison of the predicted clear liquid
height by CFD simulations and experimental data with varying
supercial gas velocity, liquid weir loads and weir height, respectively. The predicted clear liquid height decreases with increasing
supercial gas velocity at a given liquid ow rate and weir height
in Fig. 9, and it increases with increasing liquid ow rate at a given
supercial gas velocity and weir height in Fig. 10, and it decreases
with increasing weir height at a given supercial gas velocity and

In this paper, we have tried to predict the ow hydraulics of

a full open valve tray by the means of CFD. A three-dimensional
two-phase CFD model was developed in the Eulerian framework,
in which gas and liquid phases were treated as interpenetrating
continuous phases, and the model was solved by FLUENT. The drag
coefcient correlation of Krishna et al. for momentum interaction of
two-phase ow was incorporated into the model, but since there
has no appropriated correlation of liquid hold-up fraction on full
open valve tray for CFD, to overcome this problem, clear liquid
height on full open valve tray was measured. A new correlation of
clear liquid height on full open valve tray was found based on experimental data. As a parameter in the correlation, the liquid hold-up
fraction e was obtained as

e = exp 1.44Us

G
L G

0.74 

Based on this equation, the closed model was developed. The

CFD model was used to predict clear liquid for various combinations of gas and liquid rates, and weir height. The simulation results
exhibit some known features of the two-phase ow eld in valve
trays and are in good agreement with the experimental results. The
results of this work show that CFD can be used as a powerful tool
in the design and analysis of industrial trays.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge nancial support by the
Natural Science Key Foundation of Tianjin China (project no.
07JCZDJC02600) and the assistance of the staff in the National Engineering Research Center for Distillation Technology (China).
Appendix A. Notation

Fig. 13. Liquid U velocity proles at different elevations above tray, x = 0 m.

Ahole
Avalve

area of hole (m2 )

area of valve (m2 )

X.G. Li et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 48 (2009) 145151

CD
dG
g
hap
hcl
hW
LW
M
Nh
p
QG
QL
Re
t
Us
V
Vslip
W
x
y
z

drag coefcient
diameter of gas bubble (m)
acceleration due to gravity (9.81 m/s2 )
downcomer clearance (m)
clear liquid height (m)
weir height (m)
weir length (m)
interphase momentum exchange term (N/m3 )
number of holes
pressure (Pa)
gas ow rate across tray (m3 /s)
liquid ow rate across tray (m3 /s)
Reynolds number
time (s)
supercial gas velocity (m/s)
velocity vector (m/s)
slip velocity between gas and liquid (m/s)
weir length (m)
coordinate (m)
coordinate (m)
coordinate (m)

Greek letters

volume fraction of phase


viscosity of phase (Pa s)

density of phase (kg/m3 )
Subscripts
cl
clear liquid
disp
dispersion
G
referring to gas phase
L
referring to gas phase

151

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