This study presents a new and innovative sieve tray design for a more flexible operation of separation columns in terms of possible throughput. The advantage of this new tray design is to ensure an optimal operation for varying feed flow rates and constant separation efficiencies for different load ranges. The aim of this work is to give a short introduction and an outlook to the investigation of the functionality of the designed trays. Moreover, the general design of the new trays, first results for CFD simulations of the dry pressure drop and the experimental setup are presented.