Research Update: Guidelines for Vertical Tubeside Thermosiphon Reboiler Turndown

Thermosiphon reboilers often pose challenges for column operations in refineries and chemical processing plants. Some challenges are related to turndown, when reboiler circulation rates or duties are lower than design conditions. The process industry uses various checklists and criteria, though most guidelines have little to no validating data backing them up. In this webinar, we discuss important criteria for identifying limits of turndown for vertical tubeside thermosiphon reboilers, present some recent turndown data collected at HTRI, and evaluate the validity of these criteria. We also share new HTRI criteria based on the data.