A complete refinery distillation unit modelled to real plant practice, inside and out. Most distillation column models are hollow cylinders with a few rings. This one was designed the way a process engineer would specify it and modelled the way a vessel fabricator would build it.COLUMN C-101 :Swaged tower, 2.4 m diameter in the tray section and 3.3 m in the packed section, 33.6 m from grade to the top head. 2:1 ellipsoidal heads, fireproofed skirt with access opening and vents, base ring and anchor chairs, 100 mm insulation with aluminium cladding and seam bands. Seven manways with blind flanges and davits, weld-neck flanged nozzles with stud bolts, PSV, level bridle with gauge, thermowells, lifting lugs, aircraft warning light.FULL INTERNALS WITH ONE-CLICK CUT-AWAY:24 valve trays on 600 mm spacing with random-lift valves on triangular pitch, downcomer aprons, inlet and outlet weirs, support rings and seal pan. Chimney collector tray with riser hats and downpipe. 12 alternating layers of 45-degree corrugated structured packing between a support grid and a hold-down grid. Trough distributor with parting box and drip tubes. Demister pad with support and hold-down grids. Sump liquid, vortex breaker and feed impingement plate. The cut-away wedge is a Boolean on the shell layers; the internals are pre-cut to the same wedge. Toggle it with the included text block toggle_cutaway.py.COMPLETE PROCESS LOOP :Overhead vapour to air-cooled condenser E-102, reflux drum V-101 and reflux pump P-102, then back to the column. Bottoms pump P-101 to the pipe rack. Vertical thermosiphon reboiler E-101 with steam and condensate lines, block valve, control valve and steam trap. Pre-fractionator column C-102 (1.0 m x 24 m) with its own condenser E-103, drum V-102 and pump P-103; bottoms pump P-104 feeds C-101. Pipe rack 38 m long, two levels, frames every 5.5 m, ten lanes with no line clashes. Every pipe ends at a nozzle, a valve or a piece of equipment.ACCESS AND SAFETY :14 platforms with grating, toe plates, double handrails, brackets and struts. Caged ladders with self-closing safety gates, a bridge between the columns, davits and lamp poles.SMALL COMPONENTS :22 valves (gate valves with red handwheels, swing check valves, diaphragm-actuated control valves), pressure gauges, steam trap, pipe guides on every riser, posts under every horizontal run, saddles and piers under the drums, equipment tags E-101 to P-104.PARAMETRIC GENERATOR INCLUDED :The scene is produced by four Python scripts. Every angle, elevation, radius, rack lane and equipment position is a named constant at the top of one file. Change the tray count, the diameter or a nozzle orientation and rebuild the whole unit in about ten seconds inside Blender.TECHNICAL :
- Native Blender 5.1 (.blend), plus FBX, OBJ + MTL and glTF binary (.glb)
- 374 mesh objects, 853,961 vertices, 808,575 faces, 1,493,453 triangles with modifiers applied
- 23 Principled BSDF materials, procedural, no textures to unpack, no UV seams
- Real-world scale in metres, origin at the C-101 centreline on grade
- 8 collections: Shell, Nozzles, Platforms, Piping, Internals, C-102, Site, Cameras & Lights
- 11 preset cameras, sun and fill lights, gradient sky world, AgX colour management
- Renders in EEVEE and Cycles with no add-ons
- Preview images rendered straight from the file, no post-processingPLEASE NOTE :FBX, OBJ and glTF carry base colour, metallic and roughness values but not the procedural noise and bump; bake maps in Blender if you need textured exports. C-102 is exterior only. Structured packing is simplified for polygon economy. This is a visualisation model built to engineering conventions, not a fabrication or CAD deliverable._Suitable for process and chemical engineering visualisation, training material, digital twin and HMI backdrops, refinery archviz, animation and teaching of distillation and tray hydraulics._
