As an engineer working for Dupont, you are responsible for the design of a counter-current tray column absorber, which will be used to remove ethanol from a CO2 gas stream. Your initial ethanol concentration in the gas phase is 15.5 mol%. You need to reduce it to 1 mol% at the outlet of your process. You have decided to use pure water as your liquid absorbent. The solute-free basis flowrate of your gas stream is 100 mol/hr, and the solute-free basis flowrate of your liquid stream is 2500 mol/hr. When the gas-phase concentration of ethanol is above 5 mol%, the vapor-liquid equilibrium is described as Y = 2000 X2 .When the concentration drops below 5 mol% ethanol in the gas phase, the equilibrium is described as X=0.25 Y.

Can you use the Kremser equation to solve for the number of stages required in the tray column?