Dr. Vineet Vishwakarma is the winner of the 2022 Excellence Award in Fluid Separations of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE). His thesis on “Experimental and numerical investigations for an advanced modeling of two-phase flow and mass transfer on column trays,” completed at TU Dresden, Germany, under the supervision of Professor Dr. Uwe Hampel, is unanimously selected by the international jury as the best submission. The jury described the candidate’s thesis as outstanding, showing a balanced mix of experimental and theoretical work and also praised the author’s solid publication track record.
Distillation reportedly is the leading thermal separation technology carried out in millions of tray columns operating globally. Despite being the biggest energy consumers and the largest single investments in separation industry, these columns will remain in service in the future due to unavailability of any industrially viable alternative. However, rising energy costs and the climate emergency drive the need to urgently improve the efficiency of separation processes globally. In his thesis, Vishwakarma addresses a derivation and validation of an improved predictive model for calculating tray efficiencies at typical operating conditions for distillation and absorption/desorption columns.
The flow conditions and the residence time distribution of the gas and liquid flow on the trays were characterized both in theoretical models and experiments. Vishwakarma built a unique advanced measurement device and applied advanced modeling to phenomena he observed experimentally. The custom-built devices enabled him to measure phenomena that are difficult to measure and to develop an improved and reliable experimental and numerical methodology for estimating tray efficiencies.
The 2022 Excellence Award in Fluid Separations is sponsored by Evonik Industries AG.
Read the press release at: www.efce.org
