The tray temperatures in our preflash tower, shown in Fig. 6.4, drop as the gas flows up the tower. Most of the reduced sensible-heat content of the flowing gas is converted to latent heat of evaporation of the downflowing reflux. This means that the liquid flow, or internal reflux rate, decreases as the liquid flows down the column. The greater the temperature drop per tray, the greater the evaporation of internal reflux. It is not unusual for 80 to 90 percent of the reflux to evaporate between the top and bottom trays in the absorption section of many towers. We say that the lower trays in the absorption section of such a tower are “drying out.” The separation efficiency of trays operating with extremely low liquid flows over their weirs will be very low. This problem is commonly encountered for towers with low reflux ratios and a multi component overhead product composition.
