One of the side product coming from the reactor is methanol vapor which can be extremely toxic to humans if inhaled. Thus, in ensuring a safety of employees, a recovery of the methanol vapor is deemed necessities. In this chemical plant, absorption method is used. As for now, the maximum capacity of inlet gas flow rate in gas absorption tower is 100 kg mol/hour, with a mole fraction of CH3OH, 0.20. Inside the tower, a gas mixture at 1.0 atm pressure absolute containing air and methanol vapor is contacted with pure water at 332.6 K. The liquid flow rate entering can be within the range of 250 - 450 kg mol water/hour. 

In 2020, there is some amendments on the Environmental Act whereby the release of the methanol vapor into the open air becomes more stringent. Thus, as a process engineer at this chemical plant, you are required to come out with a solution on how to increase the recovery of the methanol vapor. You have done some studies on the methanol-water system and it comes out that solubility of methanol increases with decreasing temperature. However, decreasing an operational temperature of gas absorption tower might increase the cooler costs for about 15% for every 10 °C of temperature reduction.

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